Harden may be coming here?

[KL2]

They can sign any FA they want, to a minimum contract, if they have a roster spot. None of those guys are likely to command above the minimum.

I thought the new CBA prevented this? Am I thinking of buyout candidates? Either way none of these guys will sniff the court anyway under Lue.

They need another trade to get this team balanced again. Sooner rather than later too.

[clipperlover]

So excited to see Lue trot out the following line-up for stretches of games when Kawhi and PG are out:
Russ
Norm
Bones
Harden
Mann

He can occasionally sub in Tucker to add more size. He will outsmart Malone with using his ultra small line-up vs the NBA sized Denver starting 5.

Again, this is all about moving into the Intuit Dome. He needs to create just enough excitement with lots of regular season wins. Getting bounced in the playoffs won't matter because the season ticket sale commitments will need to be in before that happens.

[wco81]

Everything about this is awful except that we're finally free of Marcus Morris and we didn't trade Mann. We are still an old, slow, no-upside team that won't beat Denver and we just gave away more picks to lock ourselves in to a team that's not good enough. Harden's going to quit at the slightest adversity. Frank needs to be fired.

Presumably the ownership signed off on this trade.

Question is, are the Clippers going to extend Harden after this season?

On top of looking at big extensions for PG13 and KL?

Did they give up too many assets that Harden just can't be a rental for this season?

If the Clippers win the chip, easy answer, you run it back and pay all of them.

But if they don't win?

Well retain at least a couple of them for the new arena next season?

[og15]

why is Norm Powell still on this team and what is his purpose

big big big time concerns with this trade

To trade him for a PF seems like the purpose

[nedleeds]

(weird this redirects here from the News article)

Seems like Clippers have locked in the worst of both worlds. This team is less than 5% to win a title, but all future incentive to tank and get the next Blake Griffin are gone because of all the picks.

If they fail in the 1st or second round and don't extend or resign Harden, pg and KL they can all walk. Now you have no picks, no good players ... but I guess infinite cap space.

I'm not sure where PG and Kawhi are getting $48 million in 24-25 but if they end the year healthy somebody might be dumb enough.

[nickhx2]

why is Norm Powell still on this team and what is his purpose

big big big time concerns with this trade

To trade him for a PF seems like the purpose

are there any current, known discussions about him being outbound since the trade? because if that's the case or the team at least had implied it somehow then I'll feel better

[Roscoe Sheed]

Why are people upset about this trade? The Clippers didn't have to give up Mann or Powell. True- they traded all of their power forwards but they were all subpar anyway and they got a solid defensive player back in Tucker. I'm sad to see Batum go, but all things considered this a good trade. Harden is a great distributor with superb court vision and can still score. They had a talent deficit as compared with the top teams in the west and they addressed it in this trade

Tucker isn't the answer to our hole at the 4. This isn't Rockets/Bucks Tucker, he's been washed up for a few years now. He's pushing 40 years old. I'd rather give Petrusev a chance but we all know Lue won't. Tucker will just be this year's Morris.

Harden is fool's gold for reasons that have been discussed ad nauseum.

I genuinely don't see how we've addressed any of our flaws with this trade. Yesterday, we had the oldest team in the league with very little size, athleticism or upside and no answer for Jokic. Today, we have... the oldest team in the league with very little size, athleticism or upside and no answer for Jokic. The only thing that's changed is that we have even fewer draft picks to rebuild with after this team implodes.

It's like Frank is trying to follow the 2006 Heat blueprint with all these over-the-hill veterans. But that team only worked because it had a 24-year-old Wade. We don't have anyone like that. And Lue is no Pat Riley.

I've never been a big fan of Harden mainly due to his ref baiting, but he is still very talented. He can still score in many ways and has some of the best court vision in the NBA. Nobody was excited about our PF rotation any way- they can play Tucker, Brown, and Kawhi at the 4 and maybe make a trade to upgrade the 4.

If the roster stays healthy, they will be dangerous

[nickhx2]

huge irony here considering i expressed this same exact sentiment about Westbrook messing with what seemed to be working

but man I'm beyond concerned that harden here will cause him to regress and dial back much if the really positive things he's currently doing for us on the court - given what looks to be yet another change in role

[Clemenza]

Everything about this is awful except that we're finally free of Marcus Morris and we didn't trade Mann. We are still an old, slow, no-upside team that won't beat Denver and we just gave away more picks to lock ourselves in to a team that's not good enough. Harden's going to quit at the slightest adversity. Frank needs to be fired.

Nah the trade worked out much better than anticipated. "Old & slow"? We just got rid of three guys in their mid thirties who are almost out of the league. We'll miss Batum but he's almost done. Lue didn't play RoCo and Morris being moved was long overdue. KJ Martin didn't look that good to me in the short time he was with us. Still have Mann, Bones, Boston, Kobe Brown, Josh Primo, etc. And young talent is easy to get now. OKC has 30+ picks over the next six years but unfortunately you can only have 15 players on a roster. They can't draft 5-6 new players a year and absorb them into their team. Rosters are full, vets aren't retiring, a new draft every season, players coming from overseas, the G League, etc. Its nothing getting young talent anymore so the 2028 1st rounder we're giving up is meaningless. OKC, Houston, etc are going to be cutting and releasing 1st round picks with upside after only one season with them. Teams who have traded away pics like us, the Lakers, Wolves, etc. will pick those players up for peanuts over the next 2-4 years. The league has changed

This Harden move after the smoke has cleared is now looking like a low risk move imo. If it doesn't work then he's a free agent at the end of the season and we move on from him. Still has to see how this works out. Who starts, who comes off the bench. I too was against acquiring Harden, but now that we didn't give up much to get him, lets see how this plays out.

[Clemenza]

(weird this redirects here from the News article)

Seems like Clippers have locked in the worst of both worlds. This team is less than 5% to win a title, but all future incentive to tank and get the next Blake Griffin are gone because of all the picks.

If they fail in the 1st or second round and don't extend or resign Harden, pg and KL they can all walk. Now you have no picks, no good players ... but I guess infinite cap space.

I'm not sure where PG and Kawhi are getting $48 million in 24-25 but if they end the year healthy somebody might be dumb enough.

Getting young talent isn't a problem anymore. There's no need to tank for a potential superstar from the draft anymore. Half of these highly drafted kids aren't even panning out or just becoming role players. We're fine in the youth department with Mann, Bones, Brandon Boston, Kobe Brown, and Josh Primo. We just need health and cohesion from our stars

[madmaxmedia]

why is Norm Powell still on this team and what is his purpose

big big big time concerns with this trade

We will ideally trade him. but his contract is somewhat of an issue so we'll have to wait for the right trade opportunity.

[Vae Victus]

After sleeping on this trade, my conclusion is still the same. Clips badly overpaid, eating Tucker's corpse, giving up 2 more SRPs, and ALL of the PF depth (RoCo, Batum, KMJ, Mook) was Morey extracting maximum bounty to hurt the Clips. I have no clue why, with the Harden situation deteriorating so badly, they pulled the trigger now, than wait another week or so.

One or two of the following changes woulda made this move so much more palatable to me.

Not giving up 2 extra SRPs
Trading Coffey instead of KMJ
No Tucker, keep one of RoCo or Batum
No future pick swap (obviously this would be the hardest ask)

If the Clippers dont get superstar Harden for this season and next, this is trade is utterly crippling in the future. Hopefully all 3 of Kawhi, PG13, and Harden are willing to take discounts to stay together, cuz maxing all 3 is suicide.

[MartinToVaught]

People were saying the same things about Russ...

Two big differences:

Russ is a model teammate who's respected and admired by nearly everyone he's played with. Harden is a diva who's quit on every single team he's played for in the NBA.

Russ was signed as a free agent for dirt cheap. We just gutted what's left of our future to trade for Harden and will be forced to overpay him after the season to save face... assuming he doesn't quit on us next.

[MartinToVaught]

"Old & slow"? We just got rid of three guys in their mid thirties who are almost out of the league.

And acquired a 34-year-old and a 38-year-old.

[Scoundreldays]

People were saying the same things about Russ...

Two big differences:

Russ is a model teammate who's respected and admired by nearly everyone he's played with. Harden is a diva who's quit on every single team he's played for in the NBA.

Russ was signed as a free agent for dirt cheap. We just gutted what's left of our future to trade for Harden and will be forced to overpay him after the season to save face... assuming he doesn't quit on us next.

Partying and strip clubs are more important to Harden. I don't like all 4 being out at the same time. So much ball pounding

[MartinToVaught]

Getting young talent isn't a problem anymore. There's no need to tank for a potential superstar from the draft anymore. Half of these highly drafted kids aren't even panning out or just becoming role players. We're fine in the youth department with Mann, Bones, Brandon Boston, Kobe Brown, and Josh Primo. We just need health and cohesion from our stars

We've never gotten our cornerstone franchise player from the draft, and we've never won anything. There's a pretty obvious correlation there.

The closest we've come is Blake, and as great as he was, he wasn't LeBron, Duncan, Curry, Giannis, etc. Until we draft a player like that, we're going to keep running into the same wall every year, like an NFL team who keeps bringing in veteran game managers instead of trying to draft a franchise QB.

[madmaxmedia]

Everything about this is awful except that we're finally free of Marcus Morris and we didn't trade Mann. We are still an old, slow, no-upside team that won't beat Denver and we just gave away more picks to lock ourselves in to a team that's not good enough. Harden's going to quit at the slightest adversity. Frank needs to be fired.

Presumably the ownership signed off on this trade.

Question is, are the Clippers going to extend Harden after this season?

On top of looking at big extensions for PG13 and KL?

Did they give up too many assets that Harden just can't be a rental for this season?

If the Clippers win the chip, easy answer, you run it back and pay all of them.

But if they don't win?

Well retain at least a couple of them for the new arena next season?

Obviously the absolute minimum to keep everyone around is to secure a reasonable seed and advance past the 1st round. Second round and WCF round are almost equivalent due to quality of teams at the top, you could get a lucky matchup and a path to the WCF or get unlucky and play Denver (or whoever is looking most dangerous) in the 2nd round. So I hesitate to say WCF or bust, unless we look really bad in the second round.

If we at least take a strong 2nd round opponent to 6-7 games, I'm pretty sure we will try to keep everyone around. A lot of people are understandably pessimistic as there's a non-zero chance of things going sideways, but a trio of PG/KL/Harden has a pretty high upside. Harden is going to make things easier for KL and PG, everyone is worried about his attitude but ironically he really is the playmaker we have been hoping for all these years.

The 213 podcast made a pretty good point IMO, one of them said that unfortunately RWB is not good enough that you don't pull a major trade because you're worried about RWB's fit. The team core is now PG/KL/Harden, and you figure everything else around those guys.

[MartinToVaught]

WCF or bust? No, it's championship this year or disaster. We have no picks until 2030 and the oldest team in the NBA. This is the most "win-now" you can possibly be, and our chances of actually winning now are minuscule. Even if we do somehow pull a title out of our ass, the rest of this decade is going to suck.

[Ballings7]

Well, that certainly is a blockbuster - goodness! what the heck..


To be honest I was liking the potential of the team with an incoming trade to trim the roster a bit (Norm/Morris/Batum/Covington, 2 of them go out).

Losing KJ Martin is kind of a bummer, but obviously him or Mann as a young piece.

I want to see Kobe Brown and Diabate get some more time now.. and one of them gets in the rotation at least semi-regularily.

PJ Tucker is solid to have as a big forward in bigger games, though past his prime.. still effective.

Welp, this makes the season a lot more interesting. Who knows how things will be... but should be fun to find out!

Its either really gonna work with Harden, or its simply gonna not and out in R1 again or no playoffs..

[og15]

Everything about this is awful except that we're finally free of Marcus Morris and we didn't trade Mann. We are still an old, slow, no-upside team that won't beat Denver and we just gave away more picks to lock ourselves in to a team that's not good enough. Harden's going to quit at the slightest adversity. Frank needs to be fired.

Nah the trade worked out much better than anticipated. "Old & slow"? We just got rid of three guys in their mid thirties who are almost out of the league. We'll miss Batum but he's almost done. Lue didn't play RoCo and Morris being moved was long overdue. KJ Martin didn't look that good to me in the short time he was with us. Still have Mann, Bones, Boston, Kobe Brown, Josh Primo, etc. And young talent is easy to get now. OKC has 30+ picks over the next six years but unfortunately you can only have 15 players on a roster. They can't draft 5-6 new players a year and absorb them into their team. Rosters are full, vets aren't retiring, a new draft every season, players coming from overseas, the G League, etc. Its nothing getting young talent anymore so the 2028 1st rounder we're giving up is meaningless. OKC, Houston, etc are going to be cutting and releasing 1st round picks with upside after only one season with them. Teams who have traded away pics like us, the Lakers, Wolves, etc. will pick those players up for peanuts over the next 2-4 years. The league has changed

This Harden move after the smoke has cleared is now looking like a low risk move imo. If it doesn't work then he's a free agent at the end of the season and we move on from him. Still has to see how this works out. Who starts, who comes off the bench. I too was against acquiring Harden, but now that we didn't give up much to get him, lets see how this plays out.

I don't know about that, 2 firsts and 2 seconds for a one year rental isn't a good outcome.