In early October, just after these Los Angeles Clippers began preparing to chase a championship for the fifth consecutive season, Doc Rivers said 2015-16 could be his team’s last run.
“We’re right on the borderline,” he told Grantland’s Zach Lowe. “I have no problem saying that. I’m a believer that teams can get stale. After a while, you don’t win. It just doesn’t work. We’re right at the edge. Oklahoma City is on the edge. Memphis, too. We just have to accept it.”
The time for that acceptance might finally be here for the Clippers, who were eliminated from the playoffs on Friday night after a Game 6 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers. Los Angeles became the first team in league history to lose a postseason series in which they led by two games three out of four years. That depressing reality, though, ignores crucial context of the Clippers’ defeat to Portland – which could serve as further justification for keeping this group together at least one more year.
After the game, an emotional Rivers veered from his training-camp rhetoric by suggesting Los Angeles would try like hell to bring the band back.
“I like our team,” he said, courtesy of ESPN’s Arash Markazi. “Our bench was fantastic this year. The problem is we have a lot of free agents on our team and I think a lot of them are going to be attractive, and so we have to fight to keep our own first and then try to build from that point. We’re going to have a difficult time. It’s going to be tough.”
The Clippers’ coach and president isn’t lying; his team is in major flux. Six of Los Angeles’ 11 regular contributors hit the free agent market this summer, and a seventh, Paul Pierce, could retire after the most dispiriting season of his Hall of Fame career.
But players like Jamal Crawford, Cole Aldrich, Luc Mbah a Moute, Austin Rivers, Wes Johnson, Jeff Green, and Pierce aren’t the type who pushed the Clippers to perennial championship contention over the past half decade. This team’s bench has been a sore spot for years, and Los Angeles’ reserves were indeed a key cog of its success in 2015-16. Crawford is a helpful player whether or not he deserved Sixth Man of the Year; Aldrich quietly emerged as an impactful backup center; and Rivers and Mbah a Moute, especially, gave their team more this season than most anticipated.
Losing a portion of that group will hurt. But come on.
The Clippers go as Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan, and JJ Redick do, and Rivers’ indirect assurance that his team’s core will remain the same in 2016-17 means they’ll be back for at least one more year. Jordan will be in Los Angeles through 2017-18 at least; Paul and Griffin have player options on their contracts after next season; and Redick will be a free agent in the summer of 2017.
If Rivers wants the Clippers to have another outside shot at a Larry O’Brien Trophy, basically, they absolutely will. That quartet is good for a playoff berth by itself. What will decide if cash-strapped Los Angeles has the chance for anything more than that, unfortunately, is the willingness of Crawford, Green, and Rivers to re-up using Bird Rights. Aldrich, Mbah a Moute, Johnson, or any other available free agent would have to be signed with the mid-level exception or for a league-minimum contract.
Despite Rivers’ preseason skepticism and a string of injuries that dashed their championship hopes yet again, the Clippers as you know them will likely be back next season for what really should be one final run. Let’s see if luck is finally on their side come a year from now.
