Los Angeles Clippers: 5 takeaways from 2017-18 NBA season

3. Danilo Gallinari‘s contract situation is dicey

At the end of every offseason, it becomes abundantly clear which teams made the smart financial moves … and ones they’ll regret by the same time next year.

The idea to bring Danilo Gallinari to Los Angeles wasn’t a bad one. At 6’10” with a career 36.7 percent conversion rate from distance, he fit the stretch-4 mold perfectly, but every player has a projected price range and the Clippers vastly overestimated Gallinari’s.

It’s not that he can’t play. Last season Gallo averaged 18.2 points on 44.7 percent shooting. Rather, his problem is being able to stay on the court.

In the past four seasons including the 2017-18 campaign, Gallinari’ played in 196 out of a possible 328 games, and has played 70+ games only twice during his 10-year career.

In any profession, the best ability is availability. Gallinari’s three-year, $65 million contract accounts for nearly one-fifth of L.A.’s payroll. It’d be nice if he could at least make it on to the court for more than 75 percent of his team’s games.

While the length of his contract makes it less problematic than say, Joakim Noah‘s four-year, $72 million deal, Gallinari’s inability to stay even remotely healthy will make his stay with the Clippers both uneventful and wasteful.