og15 wrote:The other option we've mentioned is Horford since Atlanta might be conflicted about re-signing him going forward and continuing the pairing of Horford/Milsap, but of course that's a harder one.
_IGNORED: Max Headrom-esqtvd-QRich3-EBledsoe12-alon8882-45clip
Matt Moore wrote:This idea's been percolating in my head for a while, and then I heard Bill Simmons bring it up on his podcast. The fact is that it's starting to make more sense to separate CP3 from Lob City, even if on the surface it looks horrible. The surface view says that this move seems like making a franchise-altering trade of a true superstar and a top-three point guard in the entire league just to "do something."
The Clippers have won nine in a row, but as Zach Harper and I discussed, it just feels like the same old Clippers season we always get. They look like they're going to alternate win streaks and slumps, compete against, and even sneak a few wins from, the top teams, land a top-four seed, and wind up as a valiant second-round out. There's simply never been a sense of urgency with that team, despite its incredible talent.
The ages have never matched up, either. Paul is 30, Blake Griffin is 26, DeAndre Jordan is 27. They've matured with Paul, but Paul's reaching desperation mode, and the Clippers still have time. J.J. Redick is there, he's 31. But CP3 is rapidly approaching "having to tack on with a team to ring chase" mode. He's just four years from where Gary Payton was with the Heat in 2006. He's too good for that.
Paul's also too good for the narrative around him to continue being playoff failure. He's come up big in nearly every playoff series in which he's played, including his incredible performance vs. the Spurs last spring which was capped with his game-winning floater over Tim Duncan when he was playing on a bad leg... and still he's saddled with "playoff loser" talk.
The next question comes pretty quickly: "Yeah, but where's he going to have a better chance at success?" A change of scenery isn't good enough for Paul; sending him to Milwaukee doesn't help him. An ideal location would be with his good friend LeBron James on the Cavaliers.... but they have a point guard who's, well, pretty good you could say in Kyrie Irving, and so Paul makes no sense. The "ideal" situations simply aren't available to Paul.
nickhx2 wrote:i imagine that atl would have absolutely zero problems pulling the trigger on that one.
Wammy Giveaway wrote:[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq2U3ciyS7o[/youtube]
People are getting carried away here. Yeah, it's great that we're doing well, but people are really over-reacting by calling to trade Blake after a 9-game winning streak against sub-.500 opponents. Come on now. _IGNORED: Max Headrom-esqtvd-QRich3-EBledsoe12-alon8882-45clip
og15 wrote:Not the most exciting thing, but if Josh is truly out of the rotation, the team should consider trying to trade him to Houston or Sacramento, two teams who were also interested in him. Let's be real here though, we're talking about trading him for something like a 2nd round pick.
That can be used along with the Clippers 2nd to try and get another player or players towards the deadline, or even if not, in the summer that becomes 2 picks the Clippers have around draft time to make moves. It would be nice to get some extra help for this season though.
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