I’ve been saying for years the SGA trade was historically bad. It’s about to become the GOAT

[Eyeamok]

I am reading a lot of crazy talk here about the Clippers. Did all of you forget the System James "The Beard" Harden. He will take the Clippers to the playoffs by himself.

[Edrees]

Read on Twitter

Clippers aren't going to be THAT bad. The odds will be extremely low for them to get #1 pick.

[Bornstellar]

Gotta give OP his flowers. He definitely did call it years ago and was proven right about SGA

[DonaldSanders]

I hated this trade at the time, the whole idea that Kawhi would refuse to go to LA if they didn't get PG was BS, Kawhi wanted to go to LA. He just used his leverage and got what he wanted -- classic don't let the players be your GM move.

I really doubt OKC would have required as much as they did, they just felt they had leverage over LA. Add the injury potential for Kawhi, and it was a clear overpay at the time.

[zimpy27]

Clippers did this trade to get Kawhi, and to try be better and bigger than the Lakers.

It blew up in their face hard, finally moving to intuit and they have a crumbling season. I think they could honestly be a bottom 10 team on the league.

OKC may not get pick 1 but they will get a good pick in a strong draft.

[bkkrh]

As mentioned, it doesn't make much sense to evaluate trades retroactively. Especially when the draft picks OKC got weren't even that high and they just did a good job in drafting the right player.

The Clippers traded for a 29 year old player that had placed 3rd in MVP voting to build an immediate contender with the current Finals MVP they had just signed as a free agent. Also, besides one big injury he had been pretty healthy until this point of his career, the injury issues started in LA.

SGA had a good rookie season and was viewed as a player that can develop into an All Star over the next few years, so exactly the type of player that OKC will want in return and you most likely have to give up. The draft picks all belonged to either the Clippers or the Heat, so the expectation was that they will mostly be non-lottery picks. And that has been the case with the picks that happened until now, a 12th, 18th and 26th pick.

OKC picked the right player at 12, but they could have also picked Ochai Agbaji or AJ Griffin. So there is no possibility to say that Jalen Williams would be on the Clippers today if the trade wouldn't have happened.

A bad trade to me are trades were there are already concerns and question marks at the point of the trade. Like to bring up the famous Boston Brooklyn trade, trying to build a win now team by trading 4 of your 5 next 1st round draft picks for 3 players that are 36 or 37 and have already showed clear signs of declining the last few seasons, while already having 2 star players on your roster that are declining.

If we wanna go with hindsight trades the by far worst one was clearly the Bucks trading Isaiah Thomas as a future 2nd rounder with Darnell Jackson for Jon Brockman. A guy that only averaged 2 points and 3 rebounds for a player that made 2 All Star games and an All NBA 2nd team. Of course we have to ignore the fact that nobody expected that from a pick that was at that time expected to be a late 2nd rounder and turned out to be the last pick of the draft.

[hugepatsfan]

Meh, even though the trade was PG I'll always think of it in context of they gave that up for Kawhi and PG. Kawhi was a better player back then compared to SGA now and PG was (and probably still is) better than JWill. We'll see what they do with the rest of the picks.

It's obviously great to have guys like SGA and JWill for a long window, but LAC got very legit players who opened their own window. Obviously they didn't break through, but it's not a situation like the BOS/BRK deal or Kobe/Divac deal where the other side just gave up great player(s) for nothing that ever moved the needle for them. LAC paid a huge price for an elite duo that was supposed to immediately open up a contention window and it did just that. Injuries and underperformance stopped them, but if I'm an LAC fan I'm more upset over the flops they've made around KL/PG (and the bad luck of injuries) than I am over the deal to acquire them in the first place.

[Frank Dux]

If the Clippers won a chip in 2020 or 2021 would you still consider it a historically bad trade?

That doesn’t even matter because it’s never even been a remote possibility.

[YogurtProducer]

Read on Twitter

If OKC gets Cooper Flagg I predict the league just throws the towel in. I’ve been saying future dynasty for 2 years and got clowned, but it’s getting close to that level of stacked, and may already be.

Nah. At most it would be for 4 years, as OKC cannot afford:

SGA at a max
Chet at a max
J-will on a likely max
Flagg projects to be a max player
Plus you need more than 2-3 guys on a team.

It it literally next to impossible to be a dynasty nowadays unless you manage to somehow get a star on a discount. OKC wont have that.

[The Servant]

So when are you going back to the Clippers? Probably when Kawhi leaves or retires.

We welcome him with open arms to ride the bandwagon, he's a believer.

Everyone is welcome to hop on the wagon, just a bunch of scrappy young guys and a slippery Canadian with that dog in him.

[Dadouv47]

Read on Twitter

If OKC gets Cooper Flagg I predict the league just throws the towel in. I’ve been saying future dynasty for 2 years and got clowned, but it’s getting close to that level of stacked, and may already be.

Nah. At most it would be for 4 years, as OKC cannot afford:

SGA at a max
Chet at a max
J-will on a likely max
Flagg projects to be a max player
Plus you need more than 2-3 guys on a team.

It it literally next to impossible to be a dynasty nowadays unless you manage to somehow get a star on a discount. OKC wont have that.

It's pretty unlikely we get Flagg but SGA will be 32 years old once Flagg's rookie contract ends so that's still a big window and a lot can happen in between...

[Capn'O]

I would say it was a VERY high risk VERY high reward trade. We knew about Kawhi's degenerative condition at the time and that there was a high likelihood they would fail to win a chip and give up very high value. We also knew they could catch lightning in a bottle and have a memorable run to the chip with George and Kawhi. We ended somewhere in the middle, leaning towards the downside. They had a couple of good runs, one all the way to the WCF, but were never healthy enough to truly contend.

Now they're in the phase where they're **** for awhile and didn't win one. That's not a great place. Especially with SGA in perennial MVP contention.

[phanman]

With Kawhi likely missing games for a long while there is a pretty high probability OKC is adding a lottery pick this year in a mega stacked draft. They don’t miss on draft picks. Even if you stopped it there and MVP winner to be SGA, Jalen Williams and the next couple lottery picks is all they get… it’s probably the greatest trade in NBA history. Far surpassing Kobe for Vlade.

It may seem ugly now, but will get much uglier soon

Eh they miss in the draft like everyone else. Let's not get carried away.

I’m just amazed at how they targeted SGA. Presti is unreal. His value at the time was a poor man’s Maxey and Presti knew he’d be a top 3 guy in this league

Let's be honest, he was the only worthwhile prospect to pluck from LA and build a package around. Presti just lucked out by having the only guy in the league that Kawhi wanted to play and was willing to leave a championship roster for. The fact that they got bounced in the first round against Portland just made it any easy decision to actually trade PG and then Russ. Let's not get carried away, NOBODY thought SGA was going to be as good as he became at the time of the trade.

Which brings you to the next point, the PG they traded for had just wrapped up the best RS of his career. He set career marks in multiple categories and as others referenced finished 3rd in MVP, 3rd in DPOY and dual 1st Team All-NBA and Defense. When you pair that with a reigning FMVP who had a strong bounce back season with 60 games and dual 2nd team honors, you got yourself a culture reset. If your going to evaluate the trade, you need to bring in the context that the haul they gave up didn't just bring back PG it also allowed them to sign Kawhi.

SGA, Gallo + 5 Picks & 2 Swaps for PG and Kawhi

Is a more than fair deal considering the Clippers were pseudo contenders during their era together. The only healthy year the pair had was impacted by the bubble year. Still, the organizations only WCF happened during this time. Presti getting JDub at 12 is where he should be getting his praise for.

[CwDogg]

Indiana trading Paul George for hurt Oladipo was just as bad.
They should have held on too him and got more from the Clippers

[phanman]

Indiana trading Paul George for hurt Oladipo was just as bad.
They should have held on too him and got more from the Clippers

They didn't have the luxury of waiting with PG openly campaigning to join the Lakers at the end of the year.

Even then people forget that Vic immediately became a 2x All Star before injuries ended his career and Sabonis picked up right after with his own 2x All Star nods before becoming good enough to be the centerpiece of a Haliburton trade.

I just realized that the two teams that traded away PG ended up with a franchise PG The Clippers didn't trade him but they let him walk and ended up James "The System" Harden too

[HotelVitale]

Indiana trading Paul George for hurt Oladipo was just as bad.
They should have held on too him and got more from the Clippers

As I recall, Sabonis was the bigger prize in that deal (and he did lead directly to Haliburton), and Oladipo wasn't injured at the time or seen as a big injury risk. Also no one knew that PG would try to force a trade to LAC--he was seen as definitely leaving IND via FA at the end of the season, and the whole Kawhi-PG thing wasn't anywhere on the radar.

People criticized the Pacers for not trading PG earlier--when he wasn't just seen as a rental--and others criticized them for taking the young player combo instead of pick packages.

[Patches Perry]

The genius of the trade was Presti understanding the leverage he had. Clippers knew their chance to land Kawhi rested on them acquiring George, so Presti was extra greedy in his asks. I don't know if Presti knew the extent of how good SGA would be, but insisting he be included with all the picks was brilliant.

Ultimately, most people would have done the trade if they were in the Clippers shoes. To land prime Kawhi coming off a title and finals MVP and prime Paul George coming off his best season and being 3rd in MVP voting is just too good of an opportunity to pass up on. That's effectively 2 top 5 players who are elite on both ends.

[HotelVitale]

I hated this trade at the time, the whole idea that Kawhi would refuse to go to LA if they didn't get PG was BS, Kawhi wanted to go to LA. He just used his leverage and got what he wanted -- classic don't let the players be your GM move. I really doubt OKC would have required as much as they did, they just felt they had leverage over LA. Add the injury potential for Kawhi, and it was a clear overpay at the time.

I always hate this take, just seems like hindsight talking. Kawhi or PG (or both) could've ended up on the Lakers, for one, and even if at the time part of you thought it'd be a good idea to hold out, all the 'I'll wait and call your bluff' things are a lot harder to pull off when you're facing down losing a $100 bill because you're clinging to a couple $5s and $10s. The big thing here is just that injury luck for the Clips was about as bad as it couldve been, and the picks and player(s) the Clips traded happened to turn into absurdly great things, definitely as good as they could've realsitically been. Nut no one on the planet would've realistically slotted their value as that at the time--it was just as possible that the solid young player and decent pick became like Dyson Daniels and Jae Crowder or something like that, as it was that it became MVP-level SGA and Jalen Williams. Sometimes you lose good gambles.

Also if you're calling this a wild overpay then you have to say the same thing about every star trade that did work out. Was the Lakers AD trade a total folly? The price was at least as much as this PG one (much less if you consider Kawhi part of that), and AD was injury prone as well. How about CP3 to the Clippers? That one's an interesting contrast, because Eric Gordon (a legit young star at trade time) happened to suffer more injuries, and the very good pick traded in that deal happened to get used on Austin Rivers. The Pels got bad luck with the guys they got in that deal, so it was a steal for the Clips in retrospect. The exact opposite of what's happened with the Clips with the PG-Kawhi thing.

[Tracymcgoaty]

So when are you going back to the Clippers? Probably when Kawhi leaves or retires.

We welcome him with open arms to ride the bandwagon, he's a believer.

Everyone is welcome to hop on the wagon, just a bunch of scrappy young guys and a slippery Canadian with that dog in him.

OKC are a mega fun team to watch. But OKCSINCESGA has been a fan of the clips for like 30 years or something. No way he just ups and leaves the team. Dude just wants the bastards who started this crap to leave and we'll see him back in no time.

[Rapcity_11]

With Kawhi likely missing games for a long while there is a pretty high probability OKC is adding a lottery pick this year in a mega stacked draft. They don’t miss on draft picks. Even if you stopped it there and MVP winner to be SGA, Jalen Williams and the next couple lottery picks is all they get… it’s probably the greatest trade in NBA history. Far surpassing Kobe for Vlade.

It may seem ugly now, but will get much uglier soon

Eh they miss in the draft like everyone else. Let's not get carried away.

I’m just amazed at how they targeted SGA. Presti is unreal. His value at the time was a poor man’s Maxey and Presti knew he’d be a top 3 guy in this league

What exactly is that based on?