BY JONATHAN REYNOSO
Paul George's departure from the Los Angeles Clippers this week was the final nail in the coffin for a franchise riddled with misfortune and mismanagement.
While the franchise gets set to take on a new look, they’ll also have to adjust to a new direction on the court. The experiment has failed, and like the roster without George, the strategy will have to change.
Before we dive into what the past five years have brought for the Clips, we have to look at the offseason that has ultimately led them to this point—the summer of 2019.
That was the year the Clippers signed hometown star Kawhi Leonard and made the infamous PG trade.
When the Clippers bid for Leonard—on the heels of a championship in Toronto—he requested that he have a star join up with him in LA. Kawhi reportedly had an illustrious shopping list of players he wanted to pair up with, but the Clippers settled on all-star and fellow California product Paul George.
This purchase did not come without a price. The LA Clippers put up a massive package to acquire PG from the Oklahoma City Thunder, which included:
G Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
F Danilo Gallinari
Miami Heat’s 2021 unprotected first-rounder (Tre Mann)
Clippers’ 2022 unprotected first-rounder (Jalen Williams)
Right to 2023 first-round swap with Clippers (not conveyed)
Clippers’ 2024 unprotected first-rounder (Dillon Jones)
Heat’s 2025 protected first-rounder for 1-14 (unprotected for 2026)
Right to 2025 first-round swap with Clippers
Clippers’ 2026 unprotected first-rounder
This trade cemented the Clippers' choice to build around the two-star wings, investing many of their future assets for the next five+ years, one of them being now all-star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
The Clippers front office invested so much of their future into the Kawhi-PG vision for five years that they left little to no room for error when it came to producing results. This Clippers team was built not to make the playoffs but to contend for championships.
Yet they have no trophies to show for it.
Unfortunately for them, bad injury luck and a colossal choke job during the NBA’s bubble season—blowing a 3-1 series lead to the Denver Nuggets in the Western Conference Finals— kept them from reaching their ultimate goal.
Looking back, the Clippers had opportunities to succeed but never took advantage. In a blink of an eye, the five years flew by with nothing to show for the massive price tags on Leonard, George and the supporting cast but a first-time Western Conference Finals appearance and a total of 181 games (playoffs+regular season) where both PG and Leonard suited up in the same game.
Misfortune for the Clippers franchise is nothing new. They have been cursed with injuries for what feels like the past decade. We saw this kind of injury luck with the Lob City Clippers with the core of Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, and DeAndre Jordan. Along with the injury luck, blame for the team’s playoff choke jobs has been pointed to then-coach Doc Rivers—this was mainly attributed to his lack of adjustments and his absence of leadership.
Though the Clips managed to pivot away from the Lob City era, they still were never able to get over the hump.
In a press release by the Clippers front office, they stated their reason for pivoting off George was to avoid the second apron, which means after completing a season ranked as a second-tier salary cap team, a team's first-round draft pick seven years ahead becomes "locked," prohibiting any trades involving it. Should they achieve a higher ranking than second-tier in more than one of the subsequent four seasons, that pick will be reduced to the 30th overall selection.
This new NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement has made teams more cautious of how they handle their finances, as the new CBA implications can set a franchise back years. Each year they go into the luxury tax, the harsher the penalties get—the rule can eventually lead a team to have their draft pick pushed to the back of the first round (pick 30) regardless of their place in the standings, along with other penalties.
Though the Clippers front office emphasized the new CBA rules for why they did not want to sign George to a four-year contract extension, they did offer him three years, which would still put them over the cap. So, that explanation doesn’t quite line up.
Rather, it seems like an excuse. They just gave James Harden a two-year, 70 million-dollar deal, an overpay for an aging point guard. The money used on the Harden deal could have been allocated toward George’s contract extension to at least make the financials work.
In the end, the deals have been made, and to compensate for their poor asset management, the Clippers have had to look elsewhere to build back up their roster. One of those moves was signing Kevin Porter Jr.—who is currently under investigation for domestic violence—to a two-year deal.
It is unclear what the next move is for the Clippers, who are stuck with little to no wiggle room for upgrading their squad, especially with the Harden deal eating up their cap space. Teams in both conferences are loading up on talent, emphasized by the Dallas Mavericks acquiring Klay Thompson via free agency. The Western Conference proved its might in 2023-24, and the Clips have work to do if they intend to stack up in 2024-25.
After the five-year plan missed its mark, the Clips may be stuck in purgatory again for the next few seasons. Suffice it to say, losing Paul George seems like a wave of the white flag for the Los Angeles Clippers.
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