Quote:
Originally Posted by nol
If anything getting rid of Griffin's contract and having cap room to bring in players of LeBron's choosing would make it more likely he would go there, but I doubt it was explicitly for him and more just for cap room in general. Cap room and being able to be bottom-five rather than bottom-ten bad this season if the Clippers trade their other key players.
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But they're specifically talking about rebuilding on the fly and trying not to bottom out this season by getting guys like Harris & Bradley. We'll see if they trade DJ/LouWill strictly for picks, or go after rotation players in return again. But it looks like they'll end up with two picks in the 12-16 range unless they get very lucky with their pick during the lottery, and unlike last year with it's crazy depth this draft appears to have a clear top 5 & fall off after 11-12 players. The Clippers already have 25 wins, and it looks like of the 9 sub-20 win teams only the Lakers (and Nets?) might try hard enough to pass them, even if they go like 5-28 and end up at 30 wins.
If LeBron is going to an LA team that has cap room he'll go to the Lakers, who are also doing anything they can to open up space, and have Kuzma/Ingram/Ball on rookie scale deals who are better trade assets than anything the Clippers have. If LeBron wanted to play with him having Blake as an established star in his prime would've been their trump card.
idk, I get the concerns about Griffin considering his injury history, and other teams have kind of pulled off the rebuild without bottoming out, but it just seems like he was a guy you should trade for a premium asset, not a bunch of B- or worse ones in Tobias Harris (1 more year before UFA), Bradley (UFA this summer who wants to get paid), and a Pistons pick that'll probably end up 13th-16th. Ironic that it's happening as the Clippers finally have some bench depth, bu it seems like they'll be sitting there in a year or two saying we really need to find a star.