The LA Clippers got torched 140-123 by the Miami Heat, on Monday evening, with Norman Powell, the player they traded away this summer, dropping 30 points on 12-of-18 shooting.
This loss pushed their count to 16 on the season, and one of their worst starts since the 5-17 beginning of the 2010-11 season. James Harden was so bad that he didn't play the final 22 minutes, finishing with a +/- of -39 in just 20 minutes. And yet, somehow Steve Baller still seems to have a positive outlook about Tyronn Lue, Lawrence Frank, and this team's future.
Thus, Steve Ballmer is at a point of delusion, not optimism, with Lue and Frank, and how this season has panned out.
The Clippers somehow still trust Tyronn Lue
'The Athletic' was told that Steve Ballmer has made it clear: the job to turn things around is on Lawrence Frank and Tyronn Lue. Here's the reality, though: Lue has been coasting on LeBron James' 2016 championship for nearly a decade now.
Additionally, take away the Western Conference Finals run in his first year with the LA Clippers, and Lue's tenure has been three consecutive first-round exits, a missed playoff season, and this current dumpster fire.
Lue is the same as Doc Rivers: a coach who got lucky with a stacked roster and has been dining out on that success ever since. Rivers had the 2008 Celtics Big Three, and in comparison, Lue had the peak duo of LeBron James and Kyrie Irving in 2016.
What's most painful is that the current version of the Clippers is a team full of veterans, leaders, and future Hall of Famers, yet they're getting breaking down every single night.
The Clippers are 0-10 when trailing by more than 15 points this season, they have given up double-digit leads regularly, and teams in both conferences have embarrassed them.
Even though the locker room is lost, and the game plan on both sides of the ball is out of date, Ballmer still believes this is salvageable under Lue's leadership.
Lawrence Frank constructed a roster that was destined for disaster
Of course, Tyronn Lue isn't the only problem. Lawrence Frank built this train-wreck of a roster, and Monday's loss to the Miami Heat was a perfect encapsulation of his failures. Norman Powell, the player Frank traded away because the Clippers didn't want to pay him, dominated. He's averaging a career-high 25 points for the Heat and is on pace to become the first 50/40/90 player in Miami franchise history.
Meanwhile, what did the LA Clippers do to make up for losing a quality producer in Powell? They added John Collins, who's averaging 12.0 points and 5.1 rebounds, Bradley Beal, who's out for the season with a fractured hip, and Chris Paul, a franchise legend who just got let go by that same dysfunctional organization. The Clippers essentially shipped out their second-best scorer last year for several unplayable veterans and Collins, who's been pressed into a starting role he's not ready for.
Frank's insistence on signing aging veterans over developing young talent has been a disaster. The decision to let Isaiah Hartenstein walk to sign John Wall was absurd, then trading away Terrance Mann and Norman Powell, in favor of name-brand veterans who can't keep up with the modern NBA, is organizational incompetence.
And yet, Frank still has his job. Steve Ballmer mentioned to 'The Athletic' that Frank and Lue need to figure out how to turn things around, but the truth is that neither of them has any idea how. Frank destroyed this roster by prioritizing shiny names over actual basketball fit.
The Thunder will be laughing all the way until the lottery
The Oklahoma City Thunder own the LA Clippers' 2026 first-round pick. Every Clippers loss makes the Thunder even stronger, and it's all thanks to Frank's disastrous Paul George trade that mortgaged the team's entire future.
Only five teams have started 5-15 or worse and made the playoffs since 1983-84. The only precedent the Clippers can cling to is the 2022 New Orleans Pelicans, who started 4-16 and knocked the Clippers out of the play-in tournament. That's the best-case scenario at this point.
That said, the mess created by Tyronn Lue and Lawrence Frank has landed at a point where they have both lost control over the steering wheel. Steve Ballmer needs to look at the facts and step in to clean the house immediately, because every day Frank and Lue remain employed is another day the Clippers spiral deeper into irrelevance.