OkcSinceSGA wrote:You CANNOT win a title without the draft. You CANNOT buy a title like you can in baseball by throwing money at things. Ballmer has a blind loyalty to Lawrence Frank, Lue, Kawhi. He is so desperate to always win, that he spent this summer doing media rounds talking about how he will never “tank” or be bad for any period of time.
He made it clear that he will not allow a rebuild. So in line with that philosophy, the Clippers have continued to give away draft picks, pushing their picks from 2026 or 2027 to basically 2030 now with the Harden trade.
But this incredible blind spot is likely to rob him of ever winning at a high level. It may be odd to theorize this, considering they came from an opposite kind of owner. One who never spent money, didn’t care at all about winning.
Ballmer has the opposite extreme mindset. Passion is great, desire to win is great. If it doesn’t include awareness or balance in team building (win now vs win long term) it will still lead to the same result (no title).
What would I tell Ballmer? It’s okay to be bad for a year or two while you make changes. It’s okay to develop young guys like Bones, Kobe Brown, Boston Jr, Kai Jones, Diabate for a year or two. What really is the difference in winning 51 games and being out in the first round vs winning 40 and not making the playoffs?
The Clippers current plan should be now that they stupidly re-signed Kawhi 3 years early for no reason… to take a year off. Nuke the front office and coaching staff. Rest Kawhi a lot next year. The following summer they have 115+ million in cap space in a shiny new arena in LA.
Jayson Tatum, Jalen Brunson, Donovan Mitchell a have player options they are likely to decline for more money in this free agent class.
The goal next year would be to let Kawhi heal his knee, play the hell out of young guys to see if one of them pans out. Try out a few G league or undrafted guys looking for a gem. Basically make it one huge audition year for young talent since you don’t have valuable draft picks. Sign and trade PG who will pick up his player option, and let Harden walk.
Who cares about sunken cost. Let them go, hit the reset. Maybe you’ll get lucky and Kawhi will retire early.
Sounds just like what a fan of the team who has the Clippers’ draft picks would say. ‘Let everyone walk and sign g league players, surely a star will come then!’
