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So the Clippers have been on the '2nd Round Treadmill' for awhile, which is sorta bad. Then the Clippers lost Blake Griffin to injury/fighting/suspension, which is definitely bad. But then the Clippers have been playing good ball with BG out, which is interesting. They have been mostly beating the teams under them and losing to the teams above them (implying more playoff treadmill), but that was happening early in the season with BG as well.

I came up with a hypothetical trade, not because I think it's necessarily so even, but I'm interested in what you guys think would happen to the team- would playoff aspirations improve, regress, or stay the same? Here it is:

Blake Griffin/Lance Stephenson for Jimmy Butler/Pau Gasol/salary filler

I'm interested in what effect something like this would have on the court for us. Without Blake, the Clippers have had to rely on CP3 more and also spread the wealth a bit. So would something like this help the Clippers in the short term? We get the athletic wing we've always wanted, plus we add a skilled big man who should complement DJ well. What do you guys think would happen?

On a side note, I guess Pau is planning to opt out of his contract after this season. If there's any trade scenario involving Blake, I would love to see Pau replace him at the 4 (though we'd need to create some cap space to sign him.)

Pau/DJ wouldn't work for the same reasons Pau struggled with Noah and Howard. He is a center these days.

Gibson would be the guy you'd want in this hypothetical trade but this doesn't make sense for the Bulls. They aren't contenders and Blake can leave.

All theae Blake trade talks make me want to punch people. It's pissing me the **** off.

I'm not going to rage, lol, I'll engage in the discussion.

Like mentioned, Paul is better off at C. Obviously adding a guy like Butler would be a great thing for the Clippers (with Blake ), but it seems like it would be preferable to have a guy like Mirotic and/or Taj Gibson along with him as opposed to Gasol. Even better would be something like Blake + Lance for Butler, Gibson, Mirotic.

That one is a reasonable trade from the Clippers point of view if we're saying they "had" to trade Griffin.

A lineup of:

Chris Paul
JJ Redick
Jimmy Butler
Nikola Mirotic
DeAndre Jordan

Your 3rd big is: Taj Gibson who plays PF/C and you run a 3 big man rotation.

Obviously that's a solid two way roster and "makes sense". Is it reasonable for Chicago? I don't really know actually.

I do not think clips will trade blake and I am against it. however looking at what og15 has is very interesting and I would have to take a hard look. I really like that line up.

Yeah, I wasn't actually 'proposing' it, just curious. I didn't know Pau is basically just a center now, so strike that out anyway. I'm glad he's had a resurgence in Chicago.

Chicago fans seem to overrate Jimmy Butler and I don't honestly know for sure if they would pull the trigger, although it is their FO and not their fanbase who makes these deals. but for us, I think OG's proposal is a damn good one to strengthen both the starting unit and the bench.

CP3
JJ
Butler
Mirotic
DJ

as our starting unit is a killer, great spacing and a damn good mixture of on-ball skills and off the ball skillset, and better defense than prior unit.

Pablo/Austin/Jamal as our backup guard rotation with
Wes/Luc as SF backup unit plus
Cole/Gibson as our backup bigs would make us definiately a championship type of a team with great depth. only issue I see is doc getting his judgement clouded by overusing his son and Jamal over any other 1-2-3 options on the bench.

What happens is the same than with any of the other Blake trades, we become a considerably worse team

mattd13 wrote:I do not think clips will trade blake and I am against it. however looking at what og15 has is very interesting and I would have to take a hard look. I really like that line up.

Yea, just for the excericise since it was proposed like that, I'm saying if you know, gun to Doc's head he has to make a move, okay, that's a trade that at least "makes sense". You're not as good offensively, and you're trading the best player, but the addition of Butler/Gibson as well as having a stretch 4 in Mirotic who is a bit versatile is a solid lineup that can still contend.

You keep playing a guy like Luc, and you can argue that maybe you now minimize your use of a guy like Jamal because Butler is a full time starting SF, so he's playing 35+ mpg. You can throw out a lineup like CP/Butler/Luc/Gibson/DJ for defense which is pretty solid, etc, etc

Of course like I said, there's the better alternative of not trading Blake

To be fair, we're probably underrating Butler as Clippers fans, he's pretty good, he's a two way guy, not a bad shooter, he can also go in the post against SG's if he's at that position, and similar to Blake he draws fouls very well. He's also just 26 years old, so you know out of some of the other trade ideas thrown out, it's at least better than a lot of them. Chicago fans would not go for it most likely as they would value their own guy(s) more too.