The Clippers have to spend nearly $300 million to keep a disappointing team together

In basketball years, the six seasons that the Los Angeles Clippers core has spent together feels like an eternity. They’ve reached a crossroads this summer, with three players reaching free agency and another first-round exit to show for it.

But the team staying together for this long isn’t merely a product of circumstance.

“I believe in continuity, and keeping a core group together,” J.J. Redick told SB Nation at that shootaround two months ago in Dallas. “When it’s done right, you have a lot of success. A lot of success doesn’t always mean championships, but I think if we could somehow get to 50 wins, I think that would be six straight years for this group. I’ve been here for four of those years. That’s pretty consistent.”

Redick is a free agent this summer, along with Chris Paul and Blake Griffin. He has been with the team for four years, and Paul, Griffin, and DeAndre Jordan have been together for six seasons now. They must collectively decide if that time has run its course.

The premiere example of a team like this that stuck around, and stuck around, and stuck around some more is the 2011 Mavericks. Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Terry became teammates in 2004 and didn’t win for seven years, but the Mavericks never panicked, recycling the pieces around them until they found the right combination.

“It is nice when you can do that,” Rivers told SB Nation. “I think a lot of the really good teams do that. They figure out who the key guys are and then they try to move the guys around them until you get it right, and that’s basically what we’ve tried to do.”

Rivers said during the first round that he wants to bring the core back no matter what happens in the postseason, and he is the team’s general manager. Clearly, the team is leaning that way, assuming their free agents actually agree to it. (That might be a big assumption, or it might be a fair one. We’ll see.)

There’s one enormous, massive pitfall: It’s going to cost the GDP of a small country (say, Vatican City) to re-sign the team.

This is where Los Angeles sits headed into the summer, without any of their free agents re-signed. Thanks to $32 million tied up in Jamal Crawford, Austin Rivers, and Wesley Johnson (remember what we said just a minute ago about Doc Rivers, the general manager?), they’re already paying plenty this summer.

(*The stretched money here means the stretch provision, which allows you to cut a player with a guaranteed contract and stretch it out several years longer than it initially ran. Three players contribute to this dead money: Carlos Delfino, Jordan Farmar, and Miroslav Raduljica.)

Now, let’s add the two stars they must have as part of their core: Paul and Griffin. Because of the rising collective bargaining agreement, both are set to make more than $30 million their first season. Paul — who commands 35 percent of the salary cap — is well over $35 million.

Let’s imagine a scenario where the Clippers bring back everyone. That includes re-signing Redick, bringing back likely free agent Luc Mbah a Moute (he has a player option we expect him to decline), and adding a player with the taxpayer’s mini mid-level exception.

You might see some numbers in parenthesis there. We made assumptions on each one that we should cover briefly.

Los Angeles will be spending almost as much on the luxury tax — or maybe even more! — as they are on their actually salary cap. That is ludicrous. That is the most extravagant way to burn money I can think of in this entire damn world, outside of actually piling up $150 million and physically burning it. There is no question that this could be the single most expensive experiment in NBA history.

Fortunately, the Clippers are owned by the right person: Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, who was estimated to be worth $28 billion last December. Yes, he can afford this.

Los Angeles has lost in the first round in consecutive seasons. It’s perfectly normal, reasonable, and smart to ask yourself: Should the Clippers invest more than $200 million (conservatively) in an aging core who hasn’t had playoff success in a Western Conference that will probably be run by the Warriors for several seasons, at least?

That’s not the right question. A better one: Do they have a choice?

Griffin’s injuries are concerning. If you could ever get him healthy for an extended stretch of time, though, it feels like there’s still a ceiling on this team they haven’t yet hit. Paul turns 32 on May 6, but he’s still nearly as good as ever. It doesn’t feel like he’s nearing a dramatic drop off yet.

None of the alternatives are viable options. If they bring back only Paul or Griffin, they don’t have the cap space to sign anyone else. If they let them both walk, they may not even have the cap space for one max-level player, let alone two. If they bring back only Paul and Griffin, skimping on the role players around them and ditching Redick, then they’re stuck with a team that’s functionally worse than one that just lost in the first round. If they decide to blow it all up, they don’t own their 2019 first-round pick and have players like Rivers and Crawford and Jordan under expensive contracts for several more seasons.

As free agents, Paul or Griffin could just sign somewhere else. There’s no guarantee they’re coming back to Los Angeles, not with the repeated playoff failures they’ve both sustained. However, if the Clippers have the option to re-sign them, it doesn’t seem like they have any choice except doing just that.

For a best-case scenario, it’s a lousy one. But what else are the Clippers going to do?