Clippers, Ltd.

Despite the fact that my book intake these days gravitates toward a rather mundane mix of Guy Who Explores Framing Options For Album Covers lit that overlooks pretty much everything else, I know a thriller when I read one: A handful of players emerge, a signalpoint event occurs, fingers point in all directions, some false protagonists turn heel, a surprise hero emerges and, ultimately, the denouement.

As another sport celebrates its weather-plagued opening day, the NBA’s regular season begins its mad dash toward the next step, itself a surprising behemoth with a dose of play-in confusion to those just tuning in come April, every team is getting a little tighter, every rotation moving a bit closer to the grease board than the free-for-all of 2K.

If the time put into their leading duo is starting to get to the Boston Celtics[1], it is increasingly starting to creep on just about everybody involved with the current iteration of the Los Angeles Clippers. A good thing going now means a clock is ticking. The train arrives at noon.

Good cannot simply stand on its own. Simply good work, as the world seems to prove time and again, leaves room for exploitation: someone, or something, will always get into the honey. Those bees tend to have more. 

The Clippers have a trio of stars who can do everything when they’re together, which is rare. They have perhaps the best bench mob in the league, partially via Russell Westbrook. To the Clippers themselves: this had better be the Clippers’ time.

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Once Donald Sterling decided he needed a silly wabbit more than he needed governorship over a basketball team, Steve Ballmer took over the Los Angeles Clippers in 2014. To his credit, he’s been an enthusiastic and adamant presence, often present courtside at games and outwardly willing to spend money where and when necessary, up to and including building a Clippers-exclusive arena in Inglewood, set to open next season, without a dime of taxpayer money.

Ballmer’s cross, though, is that he arrived at a definite ebb of the Lob City era. All of Chris Paul, DeAndre Jordan and Blake Griffin would be gone within the next four years, the latter of which after he was swooned into a max contract under the auspices of retiring as a Clipper. Surprise! You’re going to Detroit. So it goes.

In 2019, Paul George and Kawhi Leonard finagled themselves to the other LA team. Two strong playoff runs begat a need for even more friends, and behold: across seasons, between February and November 2023, the Clippers were able to acquire both James Harden and Russell Westbrook. If a basketball team could ever be a Sergio Leone joint, these Clippers were to become that.

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Years of being the punchline do a number on the punchline: sooner or later, the Clippers were going to tire even of this. A fallow post-Kobe Lakers period, combined with a rise in alley-oops on the other side of the arena, met the explosion in talent dispersion across the league, finally creating a perfect storm for the league’s long-beleaguered big city team.

When Kawhi Leonard, fresh off a championship campaign in his only season with the Toronto Raptors, signed with the Clippers in the summer of 2019, he did so with the implicit understanding that another LA native would be joining him. Almost simultaneously, the Clippers had traded Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Danilo Gallinari and many draft picks to the Oklahoma City Thunder for George, instantly pairing perhaps the league’s most adaptable two-way superstars.

That was almost five years ago. Injuries have usually derailed otherwise successful campaigns, and the Clippers did finally manage to make their first conference finals in franchise history in 2021. The line has always been that if you have the opportunity to acquire both George and Leonard, you do it every time. That the franchise has achieved literally its highest playoff height ever in their time feels like something. 

Nevertheless, it also feels like underachieving. This iteration of the team has never won 50 games in the regular season, and with seven games left this season against a tough menu of opponents, it may fail to do so again. Against the setting sun, the gunner may pull the trigger only to hear a click rather than a bang.

Acquiring Westbrook as a pace injection seemed to help; bringing in the eternally-disgruntled James Harden to facilitate for Leonard and George when they’re on the floor and become the sun itself when they’re off also has sparked this team. A quartet of essentially hometown stars leading a successful team into arena sovereignty: this is what Ballmer, and the league, wanted. To wit: the team recently unveiled new branding ahead of next season, counting on something like a winner.

All of which is to say, the time is now for the Los Angeles Clippers. Leonard extended his contract through 2027, and Westbrook’s extremely manageable contract runs through next year, but George has a player option this summer, and the mercurial Harden is a free agent. So it goes.

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This is where we take some time to check in with the guy on the bench. After winning an MVP in 2017 with the first triple-double season since Oscar Robertson, Russell Westbrook followed it up with three further, much less-heralded campaigns matching the feat. One of them was in Washington while riding with Bradley Beal, now partnered with Kevin Durant in Phoenix, which feels like an AI-generated memory at this point.

For all the hullabaloo about Westbrook as an inefficient chucker, his shooting figures haven’t drastically declined with his athleticism. Yes, he struggles with finishing around the rim – I can’t remember the last time he made a contested layup – but his dunks remain. Vitally, he is in the midst of a season in which he is logging the highest percentage of his own field goals that are assisted by others in his career[2].

More importantly, he embraced a bench role following early season struggles – the Clippers went 3-7 in their first ten games before Russ volunteered to come off the bench, the reverse-Carmelo Anthony. After that, the Clips went 35-13 before Westbrook fractured his hand in early March, causing him to miss twelve games and contributing to a .500 stretch for his team. 

While his shooting numbers have somewhat regressed as a sixth man, his instant offense mindset and playmaking ability have kept mixed starter-bench Clippers units moving and are a distinct contrast to Harden’s heliocentricity when he’s directing traffic. That variance can keep opposing defenses on their toes and should prove valuable in the playoffs, when rotations are shorter and players have to do more on both ends for longer periods. Russ is going to matter come playoff time[3].

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Did you realize that the Golden State Warriors hadn’t beaten the Orlando Magic on the road since December 2017? That they did so Wednesday night following a vintage early game ejection of Draymond Green is a show of their sustained formidability, even now. Did you further notice that the Houston Rockets are now sitting just outside the ten-seed after extending their win streak to ten by beating the Oklahoma City Thunder, currently in the third spot in the West and with an MVP candidate spinning heads every other night? 

Of course you know the Minnesota Timberwolves, formerly of the worst trade ever, are currently home to the best American player in the game. When the New Orleans Pelicans are on – that means, say it with me, that Zion is healthy – they can beat any team in the league.

It keeps going. On the way to figuring it out, the Dallas Mavericks have won nine of their last ten, with appearances from in-his-zone Kyrie and a record-setting Luka Doncic. Directly below them, the Phoenix Suns, finally healthy and rounding into form, lie in wait after beating the defending champion and current one-seed Denver Nuggets.

At last, we’re in the play-in spots. Oh, those pesky play-in spots. There sit the Sacramento Kings, with Domas Sabonis turning into what we might’ve expected out of his dad’s prime if he came stateside. Then – how could we ever forget – the Los Angeles Lakers and the aforementioned Warriors, national TV darlings both by necessity and their stubborn refusal to break out their snuffers. With Jalen Green usurping his pod person, and despite Alperen Şengün’s absence, the Rockets now lurk as well.

This is what we’re dealing with out there: the collective future of the Western Conference arrived a season or so ahead of time, yet precisely on time. The Nuggets remain, though a tad unsteadily despite their excellent recent form, and annual contenders like the Suns and Warriors are vying to escape the possibility of extra games. Between them sit the young guns, the teams they thought they could stymie for another year or two.

Also in that space? These Los Angeles Clippers, a Frankenstein’s monster of variously-grizzled haves and wants that has never been this relatively healthy for this long in the short time they’ve been together. The Clips entered the season with the second-oldest roster in the league, and they’ve risen to the top of that dubious list since acquiring the likes of P.J. Tucker. Starting center Ivica Zubac, Terrence Mann, Westbrook’s replacement in the starting lineup, and swingman Amir Coffey are the only regular rotation players under the age of 32.

We know what Kawhi Leonard’s got when the breaks are beating everybody else: Board Man gets paid. Paul George has established a solid tendency toward strong postseason performances with the Clippers (though, lest we forget: 2-16, including 0-6 3P, in an elimination game). Russ and Harden famously wielded a knife at what was clearly a gunfight together against the Heat in the 2012 Finals, and neither has gotten back since. 

Still, these Clippers exist to intrigue, and when the intrigue is met with performance, it can be explosive. Some explosions – think fireworks and the ending of Zabriskie Point here, speaking of thrillers – are beautiful; others, like building demolitions, are necessary; many of the rest serve more cynical, sinister means. The Clippers will explode, somehow. The next two months will tell us how they fall.

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[1] It is, but don’t yet worry over the Miami Heat, whose regular season tenor trends toward “I’ll show up to class for the midterm and the final”

[2] i.e., he is receiving passes to shoot rather than generating his own shot more often than at any other time: a blessing and a curse

[3] While on Russ: just prior to his injury, he announced a partnership with Los Angeles affordable housing project Evermont, which aims to build 180 units as well as a SEED school in South Central L.A., on a site where riots occurred in 1992. It will also provide funding for local businesses, another example of Westbrook giving back to the community that bred him. In the midst of a state- and nationwide housing crisis, with pricing flying through the roof such that renting is cheaper than owning in the largest U.S. cities, these units matter. If you don’t like seeing the unhoused, you give them a dignified place to go. Say what you will about Russ as a basketball player – God knows I have – but the guy walks the walk. He wouldn’t be able to build housing anywhere near, for instance, Steph Curry’s tony home in the Silicon Valley town of Atherton. Coastal elites, you say?