Blowing up the Clippers is still a bad idea

The Basketball Gods struck another blow to the once-mighty L.A. Clippers, tearing Chris Paul’s thumb ligament, which requires surgery and will keep the All-Star out of action for 6-8 weeks. This happens just as Blake Griffin is preparing to return to the court after a knee scope. He’s been out for a month. Over that span L.A. has gone 9-6, sliding down into the West’s No. 4 seed.

Because the Clippers have dealt with injuries before, we know what kind of team they are when main-stagers go down. When either CP3 or Griffin are out, the Clippers are still good enough to be a playoff team. Since 2013-14, the Clippers are 51-30 in all games Griffin has missed. Since 2013-14 (but excluding this season), the Clippers are 16-13 when CP3 is out.

When both are out, the team is pretty bad. The 2016 playoffs are a good example of this, as are the seven games both missed this season — they went 2-5 in that stretch. When both are healthy, the team is one of the best in the league.

If Griffin misses more time, the Clippers are going to lose some games. If he’s back in the next couple of days, L.A. should be able to float along around .500 for the next two months until Paul returns down the homestretch of the season. The ascendant Jazz are knocking on the door, and will likely catch L.A. That’d push the Clippers to the No. 5 seed, with quality teams like the Grizzlies and Thunder capable of pushing ahead as well.

The question is whether that’s good enough.

The Clippers intend to compete for a championship. They aren’t going to be a real contender as a No. 4, 5, 6, or 7 seed out of the West. The top of the conference is too damn good. No one thought the Clippers could pull home-court advantage from the Warriors coming into the season, but it’d be useful against the Spurs (see: that epic 2015 first-round series), Rockets, and Jazz.

CP3, Griffin, DeAndre Jordan, and J.J. Redick fit like gloves on offense, and there will be minimal need for adjustment time when Paul returns. Still, winning two series on the road against excellent teams just to make the Western Conference Finals is a very hard ask for any team.

That sounds fatalist, and it is. The Clippers’ path to the 2017 NBA Finals is absolutely blocked now. But there’s really no alternative except to plug ahead and try to break through the wall anyway.

The Clippers can keep their 2017 first-round pick by missing the playoffs, but no amount of losing is going to knock L.A. into the lottery. They are currently 11 games ahead of the No. 9 seed. The West is just so shallow that L.A. would need to go roughly 6-33 the rest of the way. That’s not happening.

Griffin is a 27-year-old with four All-NBA teams under his belt and a top-three MVP ballot finish. When healthy, he often looks like a top-five player. He is definitely a top-10 player. He seems prone to injury (self-inflicted or otherwise). He will be a free agent this summer, but the odds are against him leaving Los Angeles, where he has molded an off-court endorsement career that rivals any contemporary not named LeBron. If you trade him now, you’ll get an asset or two that will be highly unlikely to help you fight for a title next season.

Paul is 31 and due for a five-year, $200 million contract this summer. His trade value is now going to be severely damaged as a rental who isn’t scheduled to hit the court until March. One slip-up in post-surgery rehab and you’d be giving the Clippers a trade asset for literally nothing. The Clippers could let CP3 walk this summer, but there’s little upside in that. L.A. wouldn’t have cap space to chase a new co-star for Griffin anyways. So, what is there to do but wait for July 1, offer up fat contracts, and run it back again?

What the Clippers could try to do, knowing that this season is in all likelihood a lost cause, is work on the margins. The big salaries of Jamal Crawford and Austin Rivers will stress the Clippers’ payroll to the max this summer as Griffin, Paul, and Redick become free agents. L.A. would be unlikely to pick up assets in trading either, but clearing space for the core players ought to be help enough. (The likelihood of Doc Rivers trading his son seems low.)

No great duo has ever seemed so hopeless. History is littered with spectacular teams that never won a championship, or that even never made the NBA Finals. But you’d be hard-pressed to find a team as good as the CP3-Griffin Clippers who never even managed to make the conference finals. Odds are they’ll try again in 2018 and beyond, but the clock is ticking ever louder every day.