So long as Chris Paul is healthy and the Jazz are not, Los Angeles has a fighting chance to advance in the NBA playoffs. But without Blake Griffin and his injured toe, the short-term outlook for the Clippers is bleak and the long-term is even hazier.
Blake Griffin’s injury casts a dark shadow over the Clippers’ future
As long as the Clippers have Chris Paul, they can beat the Jazz. But what happens to Griffin this summer after their inevitable playoff defeat?
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Advancing past Utah is far from assured, especially considering the Clippers have no answers for Joe Johnson. Next up in the Western Conference bracket (barring the basketball apocalypse) will be the Golden State Warriors, who have made two straight NBA Finals and have beaten L.A. 10 consecutive times.
Beating the Warriors is a pipe dream. The Clippers would have long odds even if Griffin were still around. He’s not. A toe injury has ruled him out for the postseason, leaving CP3, DeAndre Jordan, and the supporting cast left to fight for L.A.‘s future.
It will be another crushing end to a season you can chalk up to a twist of fate. It’s been six years since CP3 and Griffin have been together. At some point, what’s happened can no longer be deemed bad luck. At some point, it’s just who you are.
Where does that leave the Clippers? Griffin, Paul, and J.J. Redick are all free agents as of July 1. It’s widely presumed that CP3 is intent on signing the fattest contract possible — one he helped invent in collective bargaining — to stay with the Clippers. Paul is said to love living in L.A. with his family where he is the clear alpha of the franchise and no one can pay him more on what should be his last mega-contract.
Should the Clippers offer that mega-contract?
Of course! CP3 is one of the best point guards in the league, an All-NBA staple when healthy. He’s 31, but we’ve increasingly seen players produce up to age 40 as health management advances. (If Steve Ballmer’s Clippers haven’t already invested heavily in that aspect, they will.) If CP3 wants to stay with the Clippers — it appears he does — the Clippers should want to keep CP3. The alternative is darkness. This franchise has had enough of that over the decades.
Redick is almost a perfect fit with CP3, so if you’re keeping the latter you might as well keep the former. It’d be nice if Redick were a touch bigger — he’s an active, smart defender, but big wings can give L.A. trouble. (See: Joe Johnson.) That said, you want shooters who don’t need the ball around Paul. That’s Redick. There are few better for that role.
Griffin is the wild card.
We don’t know how much he loves being a Clipper. We don’t know much about his relationship with CP3 beyond what we see. We don’t know much about how driven he is to win a championship, or to be the unequivocal star of his own show. We don’t know how he feels about the prospect of five more years taking orders from a point guard who has never been wrong. We don’t know how he feels about his other options.
Oklahoma City, Griffin’s hometown, won’t have max cap space, not with Steven Adams, Enes Kanter, and Victor Oladipo soaking up a combined $61 million. The Thunder can likely find a way to make it work if Griffin declares his intentions to return home, much as the Warriors had a contingency plan for Kevin Durant, but it wouldn’t be seamless.
Miami would need to officially get out from Chris Bosh’s contract to have space for Griffin. Never dismiss the opportunity for Pat Riley to sell a young star on spending his winter winning games in South Beach, especially given the Heat’s historic upswing since January.
The Lakers could have the space and an opportunity to keep Griffin in Los Angeles. The cost to Griffin would be winning. He’d have a chance to be the star the Lakers so desperately want in the post-Kobe era, but L.A.’s first team isn’t ready to win big.
Griffin, Brandon Ingram, D’Angelo Russell, Jordan Clarkson, and maybe a top-three pick in this draft is a potential playoff team, not a contender. After tasting success with the Clips, is Griffin prepared to start from the bottom again? Remember, Griffin also experienced the bottom at the beginning of his career. It’s hard to believe he liked it.
Other teams like the Suns, Celtics, Nuggets, and Mavericks will chase. We will have an unwieldy supply of Carmelo Anthony-for-Blake Griffin sign-and-trade rumors.
But all of these machinations rely on one question: Is Blake Griffin really done with the Clippers?
We don’t know. That’s what we’ll be reading in the tea leaves from now until 11:59 p.m. ET on June 30. If Griffin wants to stay, the Clippers will almost assuredly lock him up. If Griffin wants to leave, everything’s in play. What looks like complete looming chaos from the outset is really the same storm many teams face this time of year. We’re on pins and needles, waiting out the whims of a 28-year-old.
Even if the Clippers win that wait and Griffin returns, where are they then? They are a team perpetually stabbed by fate. A franchise stuck getting tantalizingly close to getting tantalizingly close.
But hey, that’s better than the alternative. You don’t break up a good team without a clear path to returning to good in the aftermath. The Clippers are good. Only the Clippers can change that this summer.
