When the Clippers traded Chris Paul to the Rockets on Wednesday, there were two immediate thoughts. The first was that Houston had become the first team to take a significant step towards trying to close the very wide gap between themselves and the Warriors. The second was that the Clippers’ summer just got far more interesting.
With Paul gone, Los Angeles has reached the proverbial fork in the road. One path they can take is to re-sign Blake Griffin, make a push to bring J.J. Redick back as well, and do their best to tread water as a Western Conference playoff team. The other path is to sign-and-trade Griffin and Redick in an effort to bring in assets, flip one or both of Patrick Beverley and Lou Williams for picks and blow it all up.
The problem the Clippers face is that they aren’t the ones in control of which path they go down. That will likely be determined by Griffin and whether he’s willing to return to Los Angeles despite Paul’s absence. There are reasons to believe he’ll want to stay — the money and the fact that he and Paul clashed on and off the court at times –and that he’ll want to leave — the Clippers are no longer a true contender even with him around.
The latter is what teams in pursuit of Griffin are holding onto as hope that he will leave L.A. for other opportunities. The Celtics, Heat, and Nuggets all plan on making their pitches to Griffin come July 1, but the Thunder will also reportedly try to sell Griffin on coming back to Oklahoma and pairing up with Russell Westbrook.
The Thunder have planned on chasing Blake Griffin for months now. They have to feel that their chances got at least a little better now.
— Royce Young (@royceyoung) June 28, 2017
A Westbrook-Griffin pairing would be exciting to watch if nothing else, but the issue for the Thunder lies with how to create the cap space to bring him in. The extensions given to Steven Adams and Victor Oladipo last year, with both making over $21 million this year, have created a cap crunch for the Thunder that will make it extremely difficult to create room for Griffin.
A sign-and-trade with the Clippers seems most likely, as Oklahoma City could flip Adams and a combination of smaller deals west to L.A. to make room for Griffin under a max deal. The pitch to Griffin is to return to his hometown and join the reigning MVP to create a thunderous dunking (no pun intended) duo that would keep Oklahoma City as a viable Western Conference playoff contender. Whether that pitch is enough to lure Griffin away from Boston, Miami, or Los Angeles will be answered in the next two weeks.
(h/t Pro Basketball Talk)
