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The 2024-25 NBA season is right here! We’re breaking down the largest questions, best- and worst-case situations, and fantasy outlooks for all 30 groups. Get pleasure from!
LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS
2023-24 end
Offseason strikes
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Additions: Derrick Jones Jr., Nicolas Batum, Kris Dunn, Kevin Porter Jr., Mo Bamba, Cameron Christie
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Subtractions: Paul George, Russell Westbrook, Mason Plumlee, Daniel Theis, Brandon Boston Jr.
The Large Query: Which Kawhi Leonard will they get?
Kawhi Leonard has not completed a playoff run with the Los Angeles Clippers since 2020, his first season with the group, when he was a 28-year-old freshly faraway from a second NBA Finals MVP efficiency.
Trying again, it’s exceptional how nicely the Toronto Raptors managed his damage on their 2019 title run. He joined them with what the San Antonio Spurs termed “proper quadriceps tendinopathy” — a situation that price him all however 9 video games of the 2017-18 season. He tore his proper ACL within the 2021 playoffs, missed your complete 2021-22 marketing campaign and couldn’t preserve the knee wholesome for both of the final two postseasons.
We can not overstate how a lot Leonard’s persistent knee points have impacted his profession. It has been eight years of this. When wholesome, Leonard is likely one of the finest two-way wings the sport has ever seen. It’s as if he has been programmed to dominate on each ends of the ground, full with the character to match. He beat LeBron James’ Miami Warmth and Stephen Curry’s Golden State Warriors on his solution to two rings.
Besides, this system retains malfunctioning. Even now, Leonard is just not wholesome. Irritation in his surgically repaired proper knee price him his roster spot on the Paris Olympics. The Clippers will handle the soreness in his knee all through coaching camp, hoping he can begin the season on opening evening.
“Ensuring we’re staying wholesome for these vital moments,” Leonard informed reporters on media day.
“Necessary moments” might by no means come if Leonard can not carry the Clippers. Paul George is not a security web. He left his hometown group for the possibility to compete for a championship on the Philadelphia 76ers. Anybody might interpret that as a vote of no confidence within the Clippers’ personal means to contend.
The Clippers do characteristic one-time MVP James Harden on a recent two-year, $70 million contract. He’s 35 years outdated, has not made an All-Star group in both of the previous two seasons and doesn’t appear to suppose he’s any totally different as a participant, regardless of enjoying for a fourth group in 4 years. For anybody hoping he may cede management of the offense, Harden informed reporters on media day, per The Washington Post’s Ben Golliver, “It’s positively going to contain plenty of me. There was discuss after I was in Houston … ‘You’ll be able to’t win like that.’ You simply noticed a man [Luka Dončić] final season make the Finals enjoying the identical precise manner I performed.”
Performed. As in previous tense. It has been six years since Harden’s heliocentric model of basketball carried a contender. Solely the Clippers appear to agree that that is nonetheless a successful technique. They changed George with a forged of complementary characters — Derrick Jones Jr., Nicolas Batum and Kris Dunn amongst them — whose contributions to a championship-caliber group are completely reliant on their group’s two headliners.
How good are the Clippers with Leonard and Harden on the prime of the invoice? With George, too, final season they appeared formidable for about six weeks — till the wheels fell off once more after the All-Star break. That was the time to blow this experiment to smithereens. However the Clippers are opening a brand new enviornment, and they didn’t need to strip the roster all the way down to the studs, in order that they gave us this patchwork pretender as a substitute.
Finest-case situation
The Clippers nurse Leonard via a comparatively wholesome season. Harden turns again the clock, working as an offensive hub, catering to Leonard or carrying the load in his absence. Function gamers fall in line behind them. Ivica Zubac emerges absolutely, defending the rim on one finish and ending round it on the opposite. Head coach Tyronn Lue extracts what he usually does from a roster — greater than the sum of its components — and the Clippers enter the playoffs a frisky first-round opponent (with a second-round ceiling).
If every part falls aside
Leonard’s persistent knee ache by no means relents. Harden tries to do an excessive amount of, and that takes its toll on his growing old hamstrings. They lose the remainder of the roster, and even Lue can not persuade them there may be something left to play for. The Intuit Dome is empty. They’re sure for the lottery, the place the Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder maintain the rights to their draft decide. And they’re staring on the prospects of paying one other $86 million to Leonard and Harden for the 2025-26 marketing campaign, when OKC additionally holds the fitting to their decide.
Fantasy spin
Zubac is the sleeper I like on this squad. He is an underrated huge man who’s constructed a powerful rapport with Harden. Zubac had the third-most assists from Harden final 12 months regardless of his scoring numbers dwindling to his lowest numbers since 2011-12 and a majority of these dimes got here from passes close to the rim and from 4-to-14 ft, which speaks to Zu’s effectivity. The Clippers’ frontcourt depth is proscribed, so he may very well be one of many higher facilities accessible after the ninth spherical.
Leonard’s knee is already a priority that should be managed. Leonard has first-round upside when wholesome(ish), however the damage considerations made me drop him to the fourth spherical in my rankings. — Dan Titus
Schedule
The most recent on Leonard prompted oddsmakers to take away future odds for the Clippers. For good purpose.
