Clippers Notes: Next Steps, Leonard, Harden, LaVine

What’s the best path forward for the 6-16 Clippers? Tim Bontemps and Brian Windhorst of ESPN spoke to executives and scouts about that topic, with one of those execs pointing out that it’s in the best interest of 29 teams to come up with an answer that question, since L.A. owes the defending champion Thunder an unprotected 2026 first-round pick.

“We might need to get everyone in the league on a Zoom and brainstorm some ideas,” that executive joked. “Invite everybody except (Thunder general manager) Sam (Presti).”

As Bontemps and Windhorst outline, there was no consensus among their sources about what the ideal next step for the Clippers is. While several scouts and executives believe it would be in the team’s best interests to make in-season moves on the trade market, some think L.A. should be a buyer and other view the club as a seller.

Other sources who spoke to ESPN suggested the Clippers would be better off standing pat, suggesting that their roster – headlined by Kawhi Leonard, James Harden, and Ivica Zubac – isn’t as bad as the record suggests.

“There are going to be several teams ahead of them in the standings that are eventually going to tank and (the Clippers) will be able to pass them,” one veteran executive told Windhorst. “They won’t admit it now, but there are stealth tankers already at play. You’ll be coming to me asking about the tanking epidemic in the spring.”

“It’s got to be better than this,” a Western Conference scout told Bontemps. “Ty Lue is a great coach. With Zubac, Harden and Kawhi, you’re just too talented to be this bad all season. You have to hold. We’ve only seen (22) games of it. Yes, it’s been terrible, but what can you do?”

Here’s more on the Clippers:

• Among the scouts and executives who told ESPN the Clippers should be in-season buyers, the general feeling was that their cap situation – which includes several expiring or pseudo-expiring contracts – puts them in a good position to go shopping for a “blue light special” before February’s deadline. “There will be teams who will be willing to dump players in two months,” one exec told Windhorst. “Guys who might be able to help them.”
• One scout who spoke to Bontemps specifically pointed to Kings guard Zach LaVine as a player who may appeal to the Clippers. LaVine would bring athleticism and give L.A. another scorer on the wing, and the cost would be modest — if the Clippers were to send out only expiring contracts, they might even be able to extract a draft pick from the Kings along with LaVine, who has a $49MM player option for next season, Bontemps writes. To clarify, there has been no reporting indiating that the Clips have interest in LaVine, so this is just speculation.
• Although Clippers owner Steve Ballmer has deep pockets and has never gone into rebuilding mode since buying the team in 2014, some rival executives are wondering whether the team will consider it in this case, especially since its cap situation is relatively favorable.“There are a lot of ways to use cap space, and if they don’t believe in this core they could really turn their team over in a year if they got flexibility,” an assistant GM told Windhorst. “You look at what they figured out in Phoenix. They had a team that was too old and turned over that roster and it changed their entire outlook.”
• One potential complication in a rebuilding scenario would be maximizing the return for veteran stars like Leonard and Harden on the trade market. The cap circumvention investigation into Leonard and his apparent no-show endorsement deal with Aspiration would limit the forward’s appeal, Bontemps writes. “James has maybe neutral value,” one Eastern Conference scout speculated. “Kawhi has negative value.”
• Asked this week whether the Clippers’ unexpected split with future Hall-of-Famer Chris Paul will diminish their reputation among players and agents, affecting their ability to recruit veteran stars in the future, president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank said it’s important the Clippers “own it,” per Law Murray of The Athletic. “You give context to everything. I don’t think you hide from it,” Frank said. “… With that being said, you still have to do what’s right for the team and organization, and we still feel that we have a terrific organization. … We’ve had a really, really successful run during the regular season with different iterations of the team. Chris was a large part of it, and then we were able to get into the conference finals on the next iteration of team, and now we’re on the next iteration of the team. And I do think we have to earn our way every time. But I’m also very, very, very confident that this will always be a destination franchise as long as Steve is owning the team.”