Sometimes being good just isn’t good enough.
Since Chris Paul arrived in 2011, the Los Angeles Clippers have ranked 11th, fourth, second, second and fifth in the NBA in net rating. For all intents and purposes, they’ve been a top five team in the league for four seasons now.
With two legitimate stars in Paul and Blake Griffin, as well as a top center in DeAndre Jordan, not to mention one of the most respected coaches in the NBA in Doc Rivers, this should be a top five team. Unfortunately, top five just isn’t good enough anymore.
You can make excuses that each of the last five years the Clippers haven’t had more success because there have simply been better teams ahead of them, but that’s not a good enough reason for this team to have not gotten past the second round of the playoffs. Teaming Paul with Griffin yielded greater expectations than the Western Conference Semifinals, and with both of those players’ seasons now finished, it’s likely that this season’s version of the team won’t even get that far.
Kelly Scaletta explored what the Clippers should do in response to the disappointment of falling short yet again, but if they want to make a big change in an attempt to reach new heights, it seems pretty obvious what they need to do. Considering the Clippers were still a top five team in a season that Blake Griffin missed 47 games, he’s unfortunately the odd man out.
While I’m very much in the “if you have two top 10 (or so) players on your team, be patient” camp, all-time players like Chris Paul don’t land in the laps of historically dysfunctional franchises like the Clippers all that often, if at all. If the Clippers were to keep their core intact and underachieve again next season, Paul has a player option in his contract that could make him a free agent in the summer of 2017.
Essentially, next season is the Clippers’ last chance at winning with/convincing Paul he can win in Los Angeles.
Again, the Clippers have been a top five team in the league with the Paul/Griffin/Jordan core, and they were also a top five team THIS season with primarily a Paul/Jordan/J.J. Redick core. With behemoths like the Golden State Warriors and San Antonio Spurs not showing any signs of regressing — in fact, they only got better this year after being dominant in 2014-15 — the Clippers can either hope that Rivers is able to bring in sufficient role players to surround his starters in the offseason for a change, or they can roll the dice on moving Griffin for a greater haul.
So, if the Clippers were to trade Griffin, what kind of realistic returns could possibly make them better than the top five team they’ve been the last few seasons? Remember, we’re not talking about them trading Griffin to rebuild, but rather to improve immediately to try and win during Paul’s window for success. This starts with recognizing teams that’d covet Griffin, as well as players who could be looking for a change of scenery:
We start with the Boston Celtics and Danny Ainge, who has a familiar relationship with his former coach Rivers and the Clippers. The Celtics have a roster filled with young, two-way players on relatively friendly deals, as well as three future first-round draft picks from the nowhere near close to being competitive Brooklyn Nets. Boston has also been rumored to be looking to acquire a star player for the last couple of seasons, and this could be a prime opportunity.
Griffin is a bona fide frontcourt scorer, which the Celtics really don’t have. A Griffin/Isaiah Thomas pick-and-roll combination has potential to be deadly, and at the same time, the Clippers would get back several pieces that’d add much-needed depth to their roster.
Jae Crowder would be the most critical addition in this trade for the Clippers, as the team would finally have a superior defender on the wing who’s also capable of stretching the court with his shooting. ESPN’s Trade Machine also indicates that this deal would improve the Clippers (by one game).
We keep the Celtics in the equation for trade possibility No. 2, which pulls in the New York Knicks and lands Carmelo Anthony in Los Angeles:
Without Griffin this season the Clippers’ offense was more predicated on Paul/Jordan pick-and-rolls, with shooters like Redick, Jamal Crawford and even Wesley Johnson in stretches slipping behind defenses for open looks. Adding Anthony to the fold helps add another shooter, as well as a player who can not only effectively go iso against both small forwards and power forwards, but help facilitate offense for others.
With Anthony turning 32 in a few weeks, he’s very much in the win-now window that Paul’s in. The big question that remains is he an upgrade over Griffin? In ways he is, because he shouldn’t get in the way of Jordan the way Griffin can, and he’s also far superior from the perimeter and three. At the same time he may not be a better facilitator, and despite the Clippers having less space in the half court with Griffin in the lineup, he’s a career 52 percent shooter from the field, whereas Anthony’s coming off of a season that saw him shoot 43.4 percent.
If this trade were to happen, the Celtics would still be acquiring Griffin, and the Knicks would get Avery Bradley, Jonas Jerebko, Evan Turner (with a new contract) and one of the Nets’ picks that the Celtics own.
This next deal that should be entertained is one that Scaletta mentioned in his column, where the Clippers send Blake Griffin to the Chicago Bulls for Jimmy Butler:
There may be some question about Griffin’s fit with the Bulls, but considering Joakim Noah and Pau Gasol are both free agents this summer, landing Griffin would help them choose which direction they want to head moving forward.
As Scaletta mentioned in his piece, Butler would help the Clippers do what they did so well this season, and that’s play smaller. Adding Butler would not only give the team an additional ball handler/slasher, but it’d also give them a major boost on the defensive end and allow room for Jordan to be an offensive force. Imagine this season’s Clippers team that went 31-16 without Griffin replacing Paul Pierce with Butler?
Butler’s one of the best two-way players in the league, and his ability to run an offense would help make life easier for Paul, who was marvelous without Griffin.
And finally, if the Clippers are going to aim for Anthony, they might as well see if they could aim higher and go after the rich man’s version in Kevin Durant:
Durant’s pending free agency is going to be one of the huge stories of the offseason, as he’s shown zero inclination of what direction he’s leaning up to this point. This could all change if the Oklahoma City Thunder can get past the Spurs and make a deep playoff run; heck, even if they don’t it’s still likely he stays in Oklahoma City.
However, if he’s seeking a fresh start, the Thunder wouldn’t mind getting a player of Griffin’s magnitude as a consolation. In Griffin, the Thunder get another star player who can play off the ball more than Durant did, allowing the offense to run through Russell Westbrook more, while still having another 20-plus-point scorer on the court next to him. Besides having a good team already in place, it’s feasible Oklahoma City’s a destination that Griffin would be alright with landing in, as he grew up in the state and spent his college days at the University of Oklahoma.
For the Clippers, much like with the potential acquisition of Anthony, Durant’s a floor spacer who not only takes pressure off Paul with his scoring ability, but also makes plays off the dribble for his teammates. Hell, you don’t need to be told about Durant’s upside or impact, as he’s unarguably one of the three best players in the league and is going to make whatever team he winds up going to a championship contender. The Clippers being able to land him would be an absolute best-case scenario.
Outside of these four deals, it’s unlikely the Clippers can actually improve immediately by trading Griffin. Sure, teams like the Orlando Magic, Denver Nuggets, Washington Wizards and even the Los Angeles Lakers have assets and young players to flip and would probably love to get their hands on Griffin, but these teams don’t have anything that’d drastically improve the Clippers.
For what it’s worth, the above proposed deals may not improve the Clippers either.
That’s what makes trading a talent like Griffin so tricky. The goal in professional sports is to be good enough to win a championship, and with two top two seasons in the last three years, it’s not like the Clippers are incredibly far away from that goal. At the same time, falling short in the playoffs year after year — even if it was out of their hands (no pun) this season — will make even the best teams make drastic decisions.
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