The Clippers are trusting their own version of The Process, and it could land them Anthony Davis if it works.
The Los Angeles Clippers are doing something amazing right now.
L.A. sits in the No. 8 spot in the tough, deep Western Conference. On Tuesday evening, the Clippers’ best player, Tobias Harris, hit the game-winner with three seconds left to lift L.A. over the Hornets. Harris is 26 years old and a free agent this summer. He fits extraordinarily well in the Clippers’ egalitarian system, and has thrived under Doc Rivers.
A few hours after that game-winner, with the Clippers a full game ahead of the competition for that last playoff spot, L.A. traded Harris to the 76ers for lesser players and draft picks.
This is a remarkable decision on many levels.
First, the Clippers are hurting their own chances at the playoff spot in the immediate term. The race is tight. The rollicking, rising Kings are one game behind L.A. and have the tools and flexibility to add a piece by Thursday’s NBA trade deadline. The Lakers loom 2-1/2 games back coming off of LeBron James’ long injury absence, and as you might have heard, they are also involved in various trade discussions for certain superstar players. The Timberwolves are sort of in the mix as well (now four games back).
The Clippers barely missed the playoffs last season and brought basically the same team back, indicating that they planned to chase a postseason bid. They were succeeding in that bid.
And they just went and traded their best player. And it was a very good trade for them and what they are trying to accomplish.
This is actually the second huge, surprise trade the Clippers have pulled for their best player. A little more than a year ago, L.A. traded Blake Griffin to the Pistons for Harris and others. This is becoming a pattern: the Clippers aren’t satisfied with being merely good, and are making moves to build a real contender for superstar additions and for championships.
This is Philadelpia’s Process, with a few major twists.
The Sixers were truly mediocre when Sam Hinkie took the reins, and Hinkie stripped that “meh” team to “historically awful” status to build an arsenal of opportunities to draft a star. L.A. is legitimately good and is selectively trading stars or near-stars to build an arsenal with which to pursue even better superstars via free agency or trade.
For the Sixers of the Hinkie era, tremendous on-court pain over the course of a few years was the trade-off to drafting a few stars and build a team around them. For the current Clippers under Lawrence Frank, giving up on the playoff race while ahead in the standings is the trade-off for them to boost their chances at landing multiple superstars in a title chase.
When’s the last time a team chose to damage their own playoffs odds in the middle of the season in service to bigger dreams two years in a row? This is what is astonishing about the Clippers right now.
At the same time, this deal doesn’t actually help the Clippers expand its salary cap space. In fact, it reduces L.A.’s 2019-2020 cap space by Landry Shamet’s $2 million salary — everyone else involved is on an expiring contract. L.A. still has space to chase two max-level superstars. They didn’t need to dump Harris to get here.
That makes the sales job to other Clippers players and perhaps even some fans skeptical of the grand plans a little trickier. In the middle of a playoff chase, the Clips just dumped a potential All-Star for a couple of future first-round picks. Teams just don’t do that unless it is clear that potential All-Star is prepared to leave in free agency, and Harris had given no public indications he would.
So if the Clippers are chasing high-end free agents, and if this trade didn’t improve the Clippers’ cap situation, why exactly did they trade a really good player for draft picks?
Because free agency is only one route to superstars. Trade is another. And only now — after this Harris trade — do the Clippers have a reasonable package to offer up in the Anthony Davis sweepstakes. (Davis, remember, listed the Clippers as one of four teams with which he’d consider re-signing.)
Before the trade, the best L.A. could do was Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, pending free agent Harris, and lower-level prospects and players. L.A. owes its own 2019 pick to the Celtics if it’s outside the lottery. But now the Clippers have Philadelphia’s 2020 protected pick, Miami’s 2021 unprotected pick (a very nice lotto ticket), plus Gilgeous-Alexander and Shamet, along with other assorted players.
Is that enough to nab Davis? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s an improved offer. You could argue it’s better than what the rival Lakers can offer. And if the Clippers can get Davis, convincing someone like Kawhi Leonard, Jimmy Butler, Kyrie Irving, or Kevin Durant to show up in July might get a lot easier.
This is not a normal way to build a contender.
The Clippers under Steve Ballmer and Lawrence Frank are not a normal team. This process is more transgressive than what Hinkie did in Philadelphia, but because L.A. stays competitive (they just might still win that playoff spot, praise be to Lou Williams), it doesn’t draw the ire of the rest of the league.
If none of it works and the Clippers strike out on Davis, Leonard, Butler, Irving, Durant and the others, and if the Clippers end up using that Miami pick to help a traditional rebuild far outside the playoff race in two years, then we can look at this moment as the inflection point of L.A. making a bet that didn’t pay out.
But if this works? If the Clippers do this? Oh boy. This trade could be famous for all the right reasons some day.