The Clippers’ conundrum: They’re good, but they’re not good enough.
Start with James Harden. He carried them to the postseason – as the fifth seed in the hyper-competitive Western Conference, no less! He was the guy who shouldered the load for 79 games, leading the Clippers to a good season, a 50-win season, a better-than-expected season, a fun season! But he’s not that guy. He’s not someone who’s going to get them a championship, or even past the first round, as evidenced by his spotty performance in the first round against the Denver Nuggets.
The 35-year-old’s game just doesn’t translate to the postseason, when fewer fouls are called and mental fortitude is everything. Harden, once an Artesia High School star, was a no-show in three of the series’ seven games – figuratively on the court and literally afterward, ducking his postgame media responsibilities, including after he contributed just seven points in a Game 7 blowout loss Saturday.
And then there’s Kawhi Leonard. The two-time NBA champion from Moreno Valley showed us he’s still got some postseason juice. Thing is, the Clippers wouldn’t have made the playoffs at all if they’d had to be more reliant on the injury-plagued 33-year-old.
They kept Leonard in the bullpen until halfway through the season because they wanted him available later, when the games counted most – except that at that point, he was short of a co-star he could count on. A Jamal Murray to his Nikola Jokic, say.
So it was understandable that, after Saturday’s 120-101 loss in Denver, Leonard had trouble thinking of anything about his pairing with Harden that gave him confidence going forward: “I don’t know right now,” he told reporters in Denver. “I guess we’re still playing at a high level, in a sense. But that’s a hard question to answer right now.”
Because the answer is bleak.
The truth is that this combination isn’t unlocking a new level for a Clippers organization that is committed to winning its first championship, but that’s only gotten as far as the Western Conference finals once.
The truth is that the window has all but closed on teams that gravitate around stars from Leonard and Harden’s generation. In Phoenix, 36-year-old Kevin Durant was excused even before the play-in. And 40-year-old LeBron James found a first-round exit with the Lakers.
Meanwhile, that window has just opened for the next generation – Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, 26; Anthony Edwards, 23; Jayson Tatum, 27, etc.
Twilight and dawn.
So the real question now isn’t whether the Clippers will pull up the blinds and pivot, but how quickly.
They didn’t acquiesce to Paul George’s max extension demands before he eventually left for Philadelphia in free agency last offseason. So if and when Harden asks them for an extension for all his hard work in the regular season, I doubt they’ll grant him one or want to stick with him any longer than necessary, and definitely not past next season, should he opt in for the final year of his deal, worth $36 million.
And we know the Clippers haven’t hesitated to pull the trigger on trades that they thought would better set them up for the future, whether it was Blake Griffin or Gilgeous-Alexander. Could Leonard be next?
Especially in light of a postseason when he shot 53.7% from the field and 40.5% from 3-point range en route to 25 points per game, 7.6 rebounds, 4.7 assists and 1.1 steals – could they sell high on the fellow who, in sickness and health, has been the face of the franchise since they won the Kawhi Sweepstakes in 2018?
I expect the Clippers’ decision-makers will be on their toes, anyway, ready to field whatever offer might come their way from select suitors in the market for a part-time playoff killer with about $100,000 left on his contract through 2026-27. That the Clippers would be keen to consider how much draft capital would be enough draft capital to better position them to pursue younger stars – ideally with charm to go with their on-court chops – when they become available.
Because that’s rarely in free agency anymore, and more often via trade. And for now, the Clippers are short on future picks to offer up in exchange; they don’t control their own first-round pick until 2030. I’d bet they’d like to do something about that.
I know they’d like to get past the first round, which they haven’t since 2021. That Steve Ballmer didn’t build a $2 billion arena for it to continue to stand banner-less and not be crackling with electricity deep into the postseason.
The Clippers have been consistently good for a good while now. But while they’ve overachieved when little is expected, they’ve underachieved when much has been. And about all there is to anticipate now is a pending shakeup, the next incarnation of a roster that will be asked to continue to win sufficiently in the regular season and deliver historically in the postseason.
That could finally be good enough.
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