Game 52: Los Angeles Clippers (31-20) @ Toronto Raptors (31-21) - 7:30 PM ET

[GuyverX]

I know this sounds kinda bandwagonish but I'm no bandwagon fan because I still watched pretty much all of the games in PreCP3 era but I just can't watch this team anymore. It's different when you know your expectations are low vs your team showed promise but just completely went on a steep decline.

At least in the bad old days, there was hope for the future in the form of lottery picks and young talent. With Doc making the personnel decisions now, there is no hope at all. Especially with how badly he's already ruined our future. That makes the losses a lot tougher to take.

Young and exciting, up and coming, rebuilding, etc. is overrated. In the early 2000's we had a pretty young and exciting team but never went anywhere. The goal was to make the 8th seed in the playoffs and they couldn't even do that.

I would take this team, while underachieving due to various reasons over the last 4 years over that "young and exciting era" any day. Doc Rivers is a bad GM but I can understand his mentality of "win now." We have never been this close to having a team that can contend. Unfortunately, the Golden State Warriors is just a juggernaut and that affects everyone. This is finally a legit franchise free from Donald Sterling. It was depressing when you are hoping to be the 8th seed and that's your season goal year in and year out...to get to the first round and be swept by the Lakers, Spurs, Kings, etc. And then you never make that transition. To be a 50-60 win team consistently. You can't take that for granted--not from where Clipper fans have come from.

Two all-stars have missed significant time, we are playing like crap currently but are still in no danger of falling out of the playoffs. That was unthinkable in the past.

[QRich3]

I know this sounds kinda bandwagonish but I'm no bandwagon fan because I still watched pretty much all of the games in PreCP3 era but I just can't watch this team anymore. It's different when you know your expectations are low vs your team showed promise but just completely went on a steep decline.

At least in the bad old days, there was hope for the future in the form of lottery picks and young talent. With Doc making the personnel decisions now, there is no hope at all. Especially with how badly he's already ruined our future. That makes the losses a lot tougher to take.

This reminds me a lot of that Roeser quote from the Elgin lawsuit:

"teams sell one of two things: success or hope, and the Clippers sell hope."

I guess one can choose to miss the Sterling days, when he'd purposely sell you a team with a potential he already knew would never be realised, cause he wouldn't pay for it.

Oh by the way, Doc hasn't traded away any lottery pick. If they were to rebuild, they'd keep all of their lottery picks in the future, they are all lottery protected.

[MartinToVaught]

I'm not saying I miss the Sterling days. All I'm saying is that this current era of the team has grown boring and stale. Just making the playoffs isn't as exciting as it used to be, especially since the expectations are higher now. This franchise desperately needs a radical shakeup. The problem is that Doc is still the GM and coach and Ballmer is still falling for his excuses. We don't have anyone at the helm who's willing to shake things up and is competent enough not to screw it up. So we're stuck in NBA purgatory for the foreseeable future.

[og15]

Well at least we know that even if Doc was a better GM, if everything still happened the exact same way with GS, we would still not have been able to match them in pure talent. If we go back to the draft and choose some other players people predicted at the Clippers pick:

2013: Allen Crabbe
2014: KJ McDaniels or Kyle Anderson
2015: (traded for Doc, Rj Hunter was drafted) if Clippers kept it, they would need a PG, but non in that range, next is a big, so let's be really generous and say they grab Willy Hernangomez
2016: Now PG is a bigger need, so let's say instead they grabbed DeJounte Murray (PG/SG), Diamond Stone, David Michineau

So this would mean no trade for Austin as Bullock was traded for him. Let's also make some adjustments and say that Crawford was traded instead of Barnes in the Hawes trade and with the new roster, Lance fits better. Let's also say the Clippers sniff out Pierce being a bad signing in summer 2015 as well as Josh Smith, and instead sign Darrell Arthur (mini MLE) who they were rumored to be interested in along with Cole Aldrich and Wesley Johnson. Do they re-sign Barnes for two years or choose the younger Wesley Johnson over him last summer? So we mix and match and we get something like this roster:

Chris Paul / Raymond Felton / DeJounte Murray
JJ Redick / Allen Crabbe
(Barnes or Johnson) / Lance Stephenson/ KJ McDaniels
Blake Griffin / Darell Arthur / Luc Mbah A Moute
DeAndre Jordan / Willy Hernangomez / Diamond Stone

Sure we could chose the best draft pick each season that went below the Clippers pick, but that would be dumb and unrealistic. So even if we adjust a lot of things, it doesn't produce a team superior to the Warriors just like that. Interestingly Austin Rivers would still end up being one of the best uses of a draft pick that the Clippers could have done since right now we'd be paying Allen Crabbe to be a 13.5 / 3.5 / 1.6 player per 36 who is very efficient (47/44/87, .599 TS%), but also not a good defender. $18.5 million would be a lot for his production.

There are some options. Move Crabbe to starting SG, trade Redick in a package with some of the guys (Barnes/Johnson, McDaniels) for an at least slightly better SF. Still, this doesn't take the team to a drastically different level, or make them better vs GS, though it does make them more balanced and better against other matchups, which is still good, but this is with hindsight too.

[QRich3]

Chris Paul / Raymond Felton / DeJounte Murray
JJ Redick / Allen Crabbe
(Barnes or Johnson) / Lance Stephenson/ KJ McDaniels
Blake Griffin / Darell Arthur / Luc Mbah A Moute
DeAndre Jordan / Willy Hernangomez / Diamond Stone

Yeah, I don't think that's even a better team than we have now. It's basically the same team with Barnes instead of Luc and swapping Austin for Crabbe, which I don't think is any better, either of them. Hernangomez and Arthur could be nice fringe rotation pieces, but nothing to write home about really.

I know people have short attention spans and want championships and quickly, or they are bored, but things are harder than that in reality, no one is entitled to a championship, only 1 team in 30 gets it, and all of those old cliches. We are in a better situation for now and for the future than most other teams that were up and coming at the same time we did, like Memphis, Portland, Indiana, Miami, probably even the Thunder. Obviously it'd be nice to be in the Warriors place instead, but again, not everyone can win.

And it makes no sense at all to rebuild or make a significant change right now, at least until we have everyone signed long term and can get something back from trading them away. The most likely outcome after a rebuild (by far) is being left with a worse team we have now, even assuming a much better executive than Doc is at the top.

All in all, if we're fully healthy come May, we have as good a chance at a championship as we ever did, which is more than the majority of teams have been able to say in the last decade.

[MartinToVaught]

I know people have short attention spans and want championships and quickly, or they are bored, but things are harder than that in reality, no one is entitled to a championship, only 1 team in 30 gets it, and all of those old cliches.

Nobody's even asking for a title with this group anymore. I'm willing to settle for a freaking conference finals appearance, and even that is almost certainly not happening with this team as presently constructed. They couldn't do it with a 3-1 series lead and a 19-point third quarter lead in Game 6. Why should anyone expect them to do it now when they're clearly declining and headed for the 6th or 7th seed? It's embarrassing to go 47 years without even making the conference finals, let alone the Finals.

We are in a better situation for now and for the future than most other teams that were up and coming at the same time we did, like Memphis, Portland, Indiana, Miami, probably even the Thunder.

Huh? Miami went to four straight Finals and won two of them. OKC went to the Finals. Memphis and Indiana went to the conference finals. Meanwhile, our "up and coming team" still hasn't advanced past the second round of the playoffs in six years together. And you can't say we didn't have our chances to do so.

At most, you can say we've done better than Portland. But is being slightly better than a franchise that has won two playoff series this millennium (one of them at our expense) really worth bragging about? Especially with one of the highest payrolls in the league, the second-highest paid coach in the league, a so-called "Big Three," and all the assets we've traded away in a futile effort to prop this team up? If Portland's our measuring stick now, then even you have to admit that this core is a major disappointment.

[QRich3]

I was speaking strictly of our situation going forward, not our past accomplishments or lack there of, or whatever. I know you're always up for a good self-beating on how awful we've been, but I'm done with all that in here.

In any case, we already know if we manage to make the WCF this year, that's gonna be your new bar for how disappointing we've been that we haven't even gotten to the Finals.

[og15]

GS signing Durant due to the cap spike made it difficult for everyone, but injuries still happen, odd matchups still happen.

We all agree that Doc is not a great GM, but like I say with all the different things, criticism is great, I love it, but we need to fact and reality check the things we say. We can't just say things without looking at the reality.

We can't say Paul should have taken a discount so that the Clippers would be better when the salary cap doesn't work that way. The discount he would have to have taken would be like the MLE before the Clippers even got significant cap space to add any good players.

We can't say don't sign DJ because it ruins the cap and flexibility without actually looking at the salary cap, cap rules, available players and realizing that there wasn't some other option that made the team significantly better let alone better at all.

We can't over exaggerate Doc's failure with draft picks or young players or whatever and act like if not for Doc's drafting we would instead have drastically improved at SF. If we look at the 10 players drafted after all the Clippers picks / possible picks, there's what, one player who would make a significant difference? I believe over the three seasons it's only Gobert out of the possible 30 players drafted 10 picks after the Clippers picks. What could be different is the trade options the Clippers could have with those picks, not any of those picks being the difference.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm not defending poor asset management. Better asset management could have changed the 14-15 series because depth was scarce, and the Clippers could have given GS a great battle that season. 13-14 nothing changes as there weren't enough moves made yet, and last season if Paul and Blake are still injured, nothing changes.

So we still have to be real and understand that the Clippers didn't have any path to being better than the Warriors as long as Durant went there. Also have to be real about the biggest issue being Blake and Paul's health before anything else.