2017 Offseason Thread

[og15]

Knight is a good player. I'd don't understand why Phoenix didn't find a way to give him more minutes

Is he really a good player? Is he really?

[nickhx2]

the way phoenix went from thomas to knight is cringeworthy

i mean you can't be perfect as a GM but my god if they had done things better they'd be in some incredible shape.

[wco81]

They had too many PGs, Thomas, Knight, Bledsoe, Dragic.

Didn't they try to trade Bledsoe too?

Heard that their owner is cheap, not really able to pay big contracts so that is why Dragic probably was shipped out.

[og15]

They had too many PGs, Thomas, Knight, Bledsoe, Dragic.

Didn't they try to trade Bledsoe too?

Heard that their owner is cheap, not really able to pay big contracts so that is why Dragic probably was shipped out.

If you are cheap and have too many PG's already, why go and sign another PG and then trade for another PG and then resign him knowing you have too many PG's . They just made some pretty dumb decisions.

[Roscoe Sheed]

Knight is a good player. I'd don't understand why Phoenix didn't find a way to give him more minutes

Is he really a good player? Is he really?

What do you mean? He's not an all star but he can shoot and handle the ball well

[og15]

Knight is a good player. I'd don't understand why Phoenix didn't find a way to give him more minutes

Is he really a good player? Is he really?

What do you mean? He's not an all star but he can shoot and handle the ball well

He's a very mediocre player though, wouldn't you say? Not a bad shooter, sure, not a bad ball handler. Below average playmaker and passer as a PG. He's okay at different things, but he's not winning you games.

I do like the previous idea mentioned of grabbing him so that he can put up some stats and then using him as trade bait for a possibly decent first round pick

[madmaxmedia]

...Probably better off not signing any current free agent to a long term contract if Paul leaves. Nothing seems too appealing.

Excellent analysis. The only thing I want to add is that it really hurts not having 2017 and 2019 1st round picks, in the event everything goes into the crapper. Even if we just go into the semi-crapper, we wouldn't have mid-1st round picks to at least give us some prospects (realistic or not) to speculate about.

[wco81]

I don't see the Spurs rearranging almost their whole roster to give a PG over 30 years old a $150 million deal. He would only give them 2 all-star level seasons in all likelihood. If they have to let several key players go for CP3, how would that really improve their chances?

They're already a 60-win team. They don't have to take such drastic action.

[madmaxmedia]

The Chris Paul to San Antonio thing is such a reach. There's literally a 0% chance that it happens.

He's not engineering a big Payday only to go elsewhere and get paid less.

He's not fighting on the players behalf as the president of the PA only to leave over 50 million dollars on the table.

The gymnastics that the spurs would have to go through just to get to the $50 Million dollar deficit is crazy. Pau and David Lee would be ridiculous to opt out of their current deals, it's just a lot of fluff that have no real merit behind them.

Wouldn't be that hard for the Spurs to clear the space, they are a little under the cap, and trading the one year contracts of guys like Parker and Gasol would not be difficult, the question is whether SA would actually want to do this as opposed to going for a cheaper PG. SA is more likely to do the later.

The one thing the Spurs have not had to deal with is dumping salaries of their cornerstone players. Duncan signed at a massive discount that made him a net positive, until he retired. Ginobli is a free agent so its quite possible to part ways with a player at the end of a deal. But would they dump Tony Parker somewhere really bad for the last year of his contract, to try to make room for a CP3 offer?

I feel like they wouldn't do that. Not just because it's not a great way to show appreciation for what he's done, but because it might disrupt their very positive culture they developed within the organization. If you want players to all be team-first before their own welfare, it has to apply to the organization as well.

OTOH they might figure out a good landing spot for him in a mutually beneficial move.

Pau is another issue altogether, with his $16M (IIRC) player option for next year. He could opt out and only get say a 2-year $18M deal in free agency, I doubt he's going to get something much better than that. I guess they could trade him though.

[og15]

...Probably better off not signing any current free agent to a long term contract if Paul leaves. Nothing seems too appealing.

Excellent analysis. The only thing I want to add is that it really hurts not having 2017 and 2019 1st round picks, in the event everything goes into the crapper. Even if we just go into the semi-crapper, we wouldn't have mid-1st round picks to at least give us some prospects (realistic or not) to speculate about.

Clippers keep picks if they go into the lottery, so if it goes to the crapper, 2019 will still be available

[Ranma]

My apologies, og15, as I've been meaning to follow up to your reply to my previous post on page 5 of this thread. I've been preoccupied with things including the NFL draft previously and now the upcoming MLB and NHL drafts as well as the NBA draft, of course, but there's little incentive for me to do so given the Clippers' lack of involvement in the proceedings.

In any case, here are my responses to your previous posts.

I think the reason you can't get on board with that is because that isn't what I'm saying. I'm saying that the majority of he draft picks haven't been that bad. Bullock was a reasonable pick. Again, like I said, Wilcox was an awful pick, so obviously I'm not saying that Doc's drafts were not bad in any way shape or form if I'm saying that Wilcox was a horrible pick.

Dawson despite being old was a good pick for that range. Johnson seems like a decent pick. Stone is the kind of pick we want from the second round, young potential guys. Michineau, again, I'm going from a limited view, but the pick didn't make sense to me, but he is supposedly another potential pick and even a draft and stash which goes against all what Doc did with his first two drafts.

Aside from Branden Dawson, ironically enough, all of Doc's picks have been questionable including Diamond Stone since it required us to trade down and pass up better prospects in order to do so. Let's start by asking a simple question: have we directly benefited from Doc's draft selections? The answer is no since none of the players drafted by him have yet to contribute in any significant fashion.

You cite Reggie Bullock as a success story by pointing out that he's playing for another team now albeit shooting 39.3% FG and with a scoring average of 3 points on 11.1 minutes per game. Despite the faulty opinion of those who don't know the meaning of consensus best-player-available, Bullock was not the sensible option when the Clippers took him 25th overall in 2013. Had Doc actually gone with the player most considered BPA at the time, the Clippers might be benefiting from a player currently averaging 22.8 minutes a game and shooting 41.2% from beyond the arc to score 10.7 PPG. Of course, that assumes Doc would play Allen Crabbe or any other non-blood relative, which points to another problem with Doc's drafting.

A successful draft entails at least two things: identifying talent and developing it. Doc consistently fails at this on both counts. In Bullock, he chose an older and less athletic version of Crabbe who was generally recognized as the better player. He further devalued Bullock's trade value to the point that we shipped him off for his son Austin Rivers, who was on the verge of being out of the league. I happened to call at the time that I thought that trade could work out because I posited that Doc would be one of the few people who could get the most out of his son when others like Coach K couldn't. However, the fact remains that Bullock was basically only valuable to be traded for a throw-away player at the time. The fact that we've since benefited from that particular trade does not change how devalued Bullock was at the time of the transaction.

You've already acknowledged the C.J. Wilcox pick as a failure, which was similar to Doc's previous strategy for selecting Bullock, and there's really no point to discussing Dawson given that he was 5 picks away from being an undrafted free agent, so we'll move on to our latest draftees.

If you recall, I advocated for drafting Brice Johnson and even signed off on the Diamond Stone pick at the time, but I wasn't exactly thrilled with how our draft went. Doc mentioned that David Michineau was going to be given a chance at a roster spot but that quickly changed to him being a draft-and-stash selection. If we were going to go that route, I preferred the more talented Furkan Korkmaz. Brice would likely have been available with our 33rd overall pick in the second round. Even if he wasn't, we had a chance to select Patrick McCaw, whom the Clippers did bring in for pre-draft workouts. McCaw is already showing more promise and contributing for a better team albeit with modest statistics than our currently injured 2016 first-round pick. Obviously, it's too early to make a final call, but given the respective track records of the Clippers and Warriors, who would you bet on making the right call? Not only that, the Warriors bought the McCaw pick from the Bucks, so why couldn't the Clippers do that instead of trading down to get lesser talents? Not to mention we had the opportunity to draft projected possible lottery picks in either Deyonta Davis and Skal Labissiere.

Was the issue Doc not wanting to play the draft picks or was it him getting players who were not worth playing or weren't even young players who needed to be developed? Bullock's minutes were right in line with the way other coaches on 50+ win teams played similar players. His development was actually good if we're comparing to the rest of the league. Wilcox, what was the point of him on the team in the first place? I didn't care that Wilcox didn't play, the pick never made sense to me. Dawson even stepping on an NBA court as a rookie was an accomplishment for the average player drafted in his range. Just getting to be in practice with an NBA team was actually more than most guys in his range get, so I can't really criticize that one if I'm being honest. Johnson suffered with injuries, but he should have got more burn later in the season. Stone got the right treatment, he needed a ton of work and I've looked at how other coaches in he league develop players like him, and playing them in the D-League for even basically the whole season is what they mostly do.

As illustrated above and obvious to pretty much everyone, Doc is at fault on both counts. He's failed with Bullock to get him to contribute at any level despite our desperate need for help on the wing even though Bullock was able to find some playing time elsewhere albeit in modest fashion. Bullock basically is a bust at this point, but Doc was the one who selected him after scouting him himself and working him out in pre-draft workouts. The fact that he was the one who chose him and couldn't fit him into his own system is telling of how inept he is as a talent evaluator as well as developer.

It is Doc's fault, but it is the organizations fault for not putting someone in the role that Frank currently has right now before. I don't think it is a coincidence that when Frank was put in the Executive VP of Basketball Ops role, then suddenly changes were being made and there was a direction. You can't spend all year coaching and have time to seriously learn and know how to run an organization and front office, etc. Doc basically got the job because of the whole Sterling fiasco, but he obviously barely had any clue what he was really doing. He basically knew the minimum of what needed to be done, and maybe he could have been able to pick it up quickly and get things going well, but guess what? He had to coach and prepare for coaching.

In the end, my feeling is that Doc should have never had the role, but from his limited view as a coach with that role, his draft picks weren't all bad. Even trading draft picks in itself is not bad, it just depends on what you are trading those draft picks for. 82games.com back when they were still relevant did a study on the expected player level from draft picks, so of course trading a pick can make sense.

Yes, as I've recently said elsewhere, Ballmer is at fault for letting this situation continue and addressing it too late, but Doc is really the one primarily at fault here. He was the one that demanded that responsibility in the first place and continues to hold significant influence with final say in matters despite shifting some duties (and blame) to others now in a too little and too late fashion. Since he's the one who still holds final say and is being paid handsomely in that role, he is the one directly responsible for our draft failings. Ballmer is just enabling this dysfunction to continue, which is significant, but one could easily argue that Doc took advantage of an inexperienced owner for his own benefit to the detriment of the organization, which to me is obviously the case here.

The concept of diminishing returns with late draft picks is all well and good but it does not explain the thorough lack of success nor excuse the disregard with which Doc has practically given away picks to cover up his ineptitude in other areas of his GM duties.

I draft picks haven't really been bad though as much as Doc gets hated on for them.

Reggie Bullock: Good pick if he didn't have injury and seemingly confidence issues. He made sense. He got us Rivers who is actually now considered a decent piece for a trade around the league, so Bullock basically has panned out in the end

CJ Wilcox: Awful pick that made no sense, still don't understand the logic or lack thereof

Branden Dawson: He was the 56th pick, and I don't know what a bad pick is supposed to be in the range, but I think he's still the only pick in the 50's from that draft to get any NBA minutes at all up until now

Brice Johnson: Seems like a solid pick, but he was injured all season, it certainly made sense and he seems to currently have skills and still have some room for growth

Diamond Stone: Solid project bench pick in the second round, the kind of players a team like this should pick in the 2nd round

David Michineau: Seems like a wasted of a pick, young (22 years old), but not super young and he still needs development, don't get that one tbh. Still an awful outside shooter (19.5% on 2.8 3PA in 16-17), still not really a PG, and still turnover prone (4.0 tov/40). I guess the idea is for him to be a defensive combo guard at 6'4, but then he's also just 180 lbs and weak, so he can't really help much at SG

Outside of Wilcox, the first round picks have been fine and made sense. The second round picks have also all been fine, except Michineau is still a confusing one. I know as fans we love hyperbole and over-reaction, but the way people talk about the teams drafting, you would think good starters and/or stars who were almost obvious picks were consistently being picked in the Clippers range and we were missing out. That's not the case. I personally don't like the idea of just going back to the draft and looking at any pick after a teams pick who is better and say "look they should have chosen him". Generally another 5,6 team, including very good drafting teams also passed up on those same players.

Also to be fair to the front office, there was a very weak scouting presence for most years, and Ballmer along with Frank just overhauled and added multiple jobs and positions in all these departments last off-season, so the team was already behind and is currently playing catch up anyways.

To me the real issue isn't really the players they did pick, it's not having enough picks. At the range the Clippers are picking, you are at best looking at a rotation player, not even a starter on average. It's when you have more picks that you're able to find a surprise. Since Doc joined, there have been 4 drafts. Technically the Clippers should have drafted 8 players, 4 first round and 4 second round. The Clippers have drafted 3 first round and 3 second round. Maybe you're thinking that 2 more draft picks is nothing, but it can make a difference in just giving you more options of players who could possibly give you something. The mid 2000's Suns aren't around anymore, but the Clippers also should certainly always be looking to buy picks.

Again, I disagree. Not having enough picks is a direct result of Doc's failing actions. He's responsible for our lack of opportunities to begin with and has blown the few opportunities that were given to him. We could and should have done better and it wouldn't have needed a basketball genius to do so despite our picks being in the latter portion of the draft. This is not a matter of playing armchair GM after the fact. His failings were obvious and pointed at from the moment he made them. Even looking back in a vacuum hasn't exactly portrayed his draft selections as being out-of-the-box or even competent at any level. If you still disagree, then I don't know what more to say, so I'd have to agree to disagree with you on this one.

[Wammy Giveaway]

Ballmer is just enabling this dysfunction to continue, which is significant, but one could easily argue that Doc took advantage of an inexperienced owner for his own benefit to the detriment of the organization, which to me is obviously the case here.

There was also the Donald Sterling scandal. Doc used that as his triumph card, specifically on how he kept the roster and the employees spirits up, to sway Ballmer into having total autonomy of the club. Now that he has it, he could do whatever he wants with the Clippers...

Except he's now doing the same basketball mistakes that Donald Sterling was doing.

For Doc, it's always been about seizing opportunity, and the Clippers are paying the price for it. Losing Paul and Griffin could be the last straw.

[Ranma]

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[wco81]

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From that article:

What could thwart San Antonio in its pursuit of Paul -- besides the various benefits available to him by staying with the Clippers -- is the number of players that Spurs management would have to clear out to be able to create the needed cap space to sign an A-lister like Paul.

There are too many variables and permutations at this juncture to know exactly how the Spurs will proceed. But the list of players whose futures in San Antonio could be affected by a full-on Paul pursuit includes longtime Spurs mainstays Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili as well as Pau Gasol, Danny Green, Patty Mills, Dewayne Dedmon, David Lee and the emerging Jonathon Simmons.

Doubtful the Spurs without a lot of those key players will fare much better than the Clippers would if Paul stayed.

[Quake Griffin]

If the Warriors keep dominating like this, I expect Chris to be more convinced than ever that he needs to team up in SAS.


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[wco81]

As a Warriors fan, all this talk is premature.

They haven't won the series and while they have won both games by healthy margins, the games were close for over a half. Last year, they had a bigger margin through the first two games.

And even if they win, injuries can always change the equation. KD and Curry are both going to be 30 soon so even though they will both get super max deals, towards the end of the deal, they'll both approaching middle age.

I wonder if a championship team has ever been led by 33 or 34-year olds.

Plus the Warriors may lose key role players this summer.

[Clemenza]

If the Warriors keep dominating like this, I expect Chris to be more convinced than ever that he needs to team up in SAS.


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Or stay put in LA and just make money. Might be also thinking that him and Kwahi can't beat that team either. The Warriors might have it locked for the next 2-3 years barring injury or a disgruntled star wanting to bolt.

[og15]

If the Warriors keep dominating like this, I expect Chris to be more convinced than ever that he needs to team up in SAS.


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Or stay put in LA and just make money. Might be also thinking that him and Kwahi can't beat that team either. The Warriors might have it locked for the next 2-3 years barring injury or a disgruntled star wanting to bolt.

...and the only guy the might want to maybe bolt is Klay to have his own team sort of thing, and that's still leaves them with two MVP level players and a jack of all trades two way player.

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[Ranma]

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[Ranma]

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