All Ball Sports: The Clippers: Days of Future Past     

by Paul Teetor

This was the week it became official: the Clippers trade with Oklahoma City for Paul George back in the summer of 2019 was the worst trade in NBA history. 

And except for the Boston Red Sox trading Babe Ruth – the Shohei Ohtani of his time — to the New York Yankees in 1919, it was the dumbest trade in the history of professional sports.

The news that former Clipper Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is going to be named the NBA’s Most Valuable Player – the highest honor an individual player can receive – was almost too much for Clippers fans to process.

But it was only the beginning of the bad news. The other half of the equation – that the Oklahoma City Thunder had the best record, 68-14, in the NBA while the Clippers are mired in mediocrity – is also a result of that god-awful trade for Paul George and the desperate thinking behind it.    

The whole never-ending, six-year quest for a superstar savior to lead the Clips out of the Lakers shadow – hello a constantly injured Kawhi Leonard, an overrated Paul George and playoff choker James Harden – could have been avoided if only they had been a little smarter and a little more patient back in 2019.

If they were, they would have realized that they already had a superstar in the making right there on their roster, a young player they could build a championship team around – not an aging star whose greatest years were already behind him, like Kawhi Leonard or Paul George.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander – or SGA as he is now universally known to the entire sporting world – was already a known quantity to hoops insiders when the Charlotte Hornets drafted him 11th overall out of Kentucky in the 2018 NBA draft and then immediately traded him to the Clippers on the same day.

In his one year at Kentucky the Canadian baller had gone from an unknown bench player to the best player on the team, an ascent so rapid that he declared for the NBA draft after just one year and was projected as a lottery pick.

In his one year in LA he went from being a promising rookie to the best player on the team. So all the signs were there for an “elite” talent evaluator like Clippers President of Basketball Operations Lawrence Frank to conclude that they had a very special young player on their hands.   

At a silky smooth 6-foot-6 with an impeccable handle, he had already demonstrated a unique ability to stop on a dime and throw his defender off-balance, his signature “hesi” move – short for hesitation. Combine that with an ever-improving jump shot and a work ethic second to none and the making of a superstar was plain to the average fan: this kid is special.    

Enter Kawhi Leonard.

In the summer of 2019 Kawhi was the top free agent on the market and signaled that he wanted to sign with an LA team. He had played at Riverside King High School, then went to San Diego State and for obvious reasons wanted to play in front of his friends and family.

So the Lakers and the Clippers both started wooing him, the Lakers to be LeBron’s sidekick and the Clippers to be their leader and best player.

Leonard’s next move was unprecedented – and ruinous to the Clippers future.

He told the Clippers that he was going to sign with the Lakers – unless they got another star to be his sidekick. Specifically, he said he wanted them to get Paul George from Oklahoma City.

If they didn’t, he threatened, he would sign with the Lakers.

That kind of blatant Trumpian blackmail – you do what I want, or suffer the consequences – sometimes goes on behind the scenes, but rarely does it happen so publicly.

As soon as the details of Leonard’s position leaked to the media, the Clippers lost all negotiating leverage. OKC General Manager Sam Presti – one of the smartest dudes in the business – used his knowledge of Leonard’s demands to extract a treasure trove of assets from the Clippers.

Pesti’s reasoning: the Thunder were going nowhere with George, so why not dump him for a king’s ransom in players and draft assets?

To trade Paul George, Presti demanded SGA, five first round draft picks, and the swap rights to two other first round draft picks. In other words, in those years if the Clippers had a higher pick than the Thunder, the Thunder would have the right to swap picks.

It was an outrageous demand – not least because SGA was already the Clippers best and most exciting player – and owner Steve Ballmer was smart enough to balk at the steep price for George. He was an All Star, but not a great player, not a player who had ever won a title or even come close.

Ballmer knew from his days at Microsoft when a competitor was trying to take advantage of him, and he said no way at first. But gradually Lawrence Frank and other Clippers executives convinced him to do it. Their winning argument: we’re not only going to get Paul George; we’re also going to get Kawhi Leonard if we make this deal.

So Ballmer finally – against his better judgement – signed off on it. Like most smart owners, his philosophy is to hire people who are good at their job, who know what they’re doing, and then get out of their way. In this case, however, they didn’t know what they were doing.

So the dye was cast, the Clippers started down a six-year path of futility and OKC got the Clippers’ prize rookie and seven first round draft picks that they used to build a young, deep and talented squad around SGA.

Paul George left LA last summer when the Clips wouldn’t give him a four-year maximum extension. He signed with Philly and spent most of the year on the injured list.

Finally, the Clipper front office did something right.

You had to figure that the two cataclysmic events of the last week – SGA being voted the best player in the league and the Clips being knocked out of the first round of the playoffs for the third straight year – would mark the end of the Kawhi-Paul George-James Harden era.

Finally the Clippers would do the smart thing – start losing for a couple of years, and re-build with the high draft picks they would harvest from the losing seasons.

But no.

Not the paper clips.

Two days after the pathetic game 7 loss to the Denver Nuggets, there was Frank talking about how excited he is to have Kawhi for two more years along with having Harden back for next season on his $36 million option – and possibly giving him even more money on a two or three-year extension.

“We feel really good about our core,” Frank said. “And we expect to be really good again next year.”

Why would the Clippers continue on the path that leads to first round playoff exits year after year? Why wouldn’t they want to do what teams like Houston and Orlando did – stink for a couple of years and then develop all that young talent you get with lottery picks into a contender.

Simple: because the Clips don’t control their own first round draft picks until 2030. So even if they did tank, they wouldn’t get the high draft picks.

Frank didn’t mention that inconvenient fact at his press conference.

And that is why the Paul George trade was the worst and dumbest trade in NBA history: the Clippers traded away control of their destiny for a whole decade – and they can’t begin to build a real contender again until then.

Ten wasted years: that’s the legacy of this dumb trade.

Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com.