After having been one of the worst teams in North American sports for more than 40 years, the LA Clippers seem determined to transform themselves into perennial contenders at all costs. Both Lob City and the Paul George and Kawhi Leonard-era Clippers failed to win a championship, and they are undoubtedly feeling the pressure to stay relevant.
However, they have made questionable move after questionable move, making it hard for them to improve in the short term and jeopardizing their ability to get better in the long term. They opted to let their second-best player leave after giving up two first-round picks and a pick swap to build around him five months earlier in the James Harden deal.
Yet, the team that they traded those picks to, the Philadelphia 76ers, was the team that signed George away from them. That makes the Clippers worse, thus improving the picks for which they traded to the 76ers, adding salt to the wounds.
Bad decisions got them here, but there is no easy way to fix the LA Clippers' problems.
The Clippers then doubled down on their bad decision by re-signing an aging Harden to an eye-popping 2-year, $70 million deal. Now they are left with an odd roster led by an aging and injury-prone star in Kawhi Leonard, a declining Harden, and a bunch of middling parts.
That might be enough to keep them in the play-in race for the next year or two but the Clippers have a $171 million payroll and would be fighting just to make the playoffs. NBA analyst Kendrick Perkins suggested that L.A. look into trading Leonard rather than being stuck in that position but he probably doesn't have much trade value at the moment.
The only other option without most of their own picks is to hope that he can be a free agent destination in 2027, when they are projected to have cap space. However, with stars increasingly signing for longer or agreeing to extensions, that isn't nearly as realistic of a route as it once was. Therefore, the Clippers appear to be stuck, left to ride out a failed era and hope for the best.