"Clippers were really stuck before Blake Griffin Trade" - Jerry West

[bstein14]

"Clippers were really stuck before Blake Griffin Trade" - Jerry West

https://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/249859/Jerry-West-Clippers-Were-Really-Stuck-Before-Blake-Griffin-Trade

Feels like we're really stuck now unless our owner is willing to go into the luxury tax to try and put out a mediocre team that might make the playoffs and could possibly win one round. We're still too far away from Boston(After they get Kyrie and Hayward back healthy) and Philly(After whatever big FA they sign this summer) to feel like we have any realistic chance of competing the next 2-3 years

[DCintheD]

Glad we helped the clippers get unstuck. That was nice of tom gores.

[Billl]

The clippers aren't even unstuck. They moved blake but then are poised to double down on other vets. It looks like they are trying to do the reload vs rebuild route...... and that almost never works.

[Spider156]

Clippers are stuck where they are until they completely tear everything down. They're basically trying to do what Dumars tried to do, rebuild while contending which never works unless you've established your Top 3 and they're HOFers and your development team is great. They don't have either of those things. Tobias is about to get paid MAD after next season and he sucks on defense. As far as Clippers are concerned all they got was Tobias and a mid first round pick. That pick is nice but Tobias is gonna get paid to be a starter or sixth man and in my opinion it'll most certainly be 20m+

In my opinion we're set to make a big trade this offseason with all our assets. We lost a first round pick which is sad but Blake is an insane asset for anyone who's desperate for a star (Toronto, Minnesota, Washington, Milwaukee, Miami, Portland, etc). All these teams need stars to get to the next level. What makes you think we can't fleece them for Blake? I'm very excited for the offseason. A guy like Wiggins can be easily had for Blake. At least Blake is deserving of a max contract. As far as Toronto is concerned, Derozan isn't worth one because of his Playoffs performance. These opportunities always come, just gotta wait for them.

[bstein14]

They signed Lou Williams to a very tradable contract that has positive value, and they are refusing to grossly overpay for DeAndre Jordan.... They've got two lottery picks in this draft and they appear to be in a much better position than Detroit now when before the trade you could say the two teams were close. Only Blake turning into a top 10 player changes that.

[Snakebites]

Their current situation doesn’t matter to us. Additionally, whether the Clippers have made/are making the right moves doesn’t change the fact that the Griffin trade was a huge coup for the Clippers.

They got out of a massive negative value contract for a declining player and got a nice first rounder in the process. They may or may not resign Tobias Harris but that’s a CHOICE they have, incidentally one they no longer had with Griffin. And even if they lose him for nothing they are still in a better spot than they were.

Call it unstuck, call it less stuck. Call it what you want. We bailed them out of a terrible offseason decision in resigning him to such a big deal.

[vic]

They most definitely got unstuck,

because they put Tobias next to DeAndre, which is a better fit (offense 4 + defense 5, and neither one of them need to dribble the ball into the ground)

And they have scorers on the wings, draft picks, and money.

They basically stole away all the potential improvements that the Pistons team had to look forward to.

Never doubt the logo.

I will remind you that Jerry West is the original king shotmaker of the league (MJ/Kobe) and also put together the original Lakers showtime dynasty, the Lakers Shaq & kobe dynasty, and the current Warriors dynasty.

Jerry West ended Stan Van Gundy's career.


The only way this works out for the Pistons is for Blake to lose 30 pounds, add at least 5% to his 3 point percentange, and become quicker on wing defense. OH and the Pistons have to win a top 3 pick in the lottery as well.

[sfballa13]

They most definitely got unstuck,

because they put Tobias next to DeAndre, which is a better fit (offense 4 + defense 5, and neither one of them need to dribble the ball into the ground)

And they have scorers on the wings, draft picks, and money.

They basically stole away all the potential improvements that the Pistons team had to look forward to.

Never doubt the logo.

I will remind you that Jerry West is the original king shotmaker of the league (MJ/Kobe) and also put together the original Lakers showtime dynasty, the Lakers Shaq & kobe dynasty, and the current Warriors dynasty.

Jerry West ended Stan Van Gundy's career.


The only way this works out for the Pistons is for Blake to lose 30 pounds, add at least 5% to his 3 point percentange, and become quicker on wing defense. OH and the Pistons have to win a top 3 pick in the lottery as well.

Jerry West destroyed the Grizzlies and arrived to GS after most of the drafting/moves have been made

He is a great GM but grossly overhyped by media and fans

Did he farx SVG in the butt? Yes

Is he the savior and God of the NBA? No

[theBigLip]

The only way this works out for the Pistons is for Blake to lose 30 pounds, add at least 5% to his 3 point percentange, and become quicker on wing defense. OH and the Pistons have to win a top 3 pick in the lottery as well.

This is my "offseason plan"

[theBigLip]

Pistons are for the most part are capped out for the next two years. I don't expect a lot of player movement this next year. But an AllStar year from Blake would likely give us some opportunities to move him. That being said, we should have never traded for him to begin with and started our rebuild at the last trade deadline. Now we will have to see if the Gores/SVG plan will work for 2018-19 season. Did we get fleeced by the Clippers? Most likely. It would be great of the salary cap rose significantly in the next few years which would also make Blakes contract a little more palatable.

[vic]

The only way this works out for the Pistons is for Blake to lose 30 pounds, add at least 5% to his 3 point percentange, and become quicker on wing defense. OH and the Pistons have to win a top 3 pick in the lottery as well.

This is my "offseason plan"

If Blake did this he would prove himself to be a true superstar.

[MrBigShot]

30 lbs is way too much considering his play style at this stage in his career. He needs the strength to muscle his way to the rim/in the post, and he's not gonna go back to being the pogo stick he used to be if he sheds some weight anyway. It would definitely be fantastic if he could shoot close to as well as he did the last month of the season, that's for sure.

[dc]

Jerry West destroyed the Grizzlies and arrived to GS after most of the drafting/moves have been made

Just for the record, Grizz started making the playoffs on a regular basis after that Gasol swap (which West oversaw) which brought in brought in Pau's brother.

He arrived in GS right before the 2011 draft. That's when he heavily lobbied the management to draft Klay.

Then he told them they needed to trade away Monta if they ever wanted to get serious about winning. Then when everyone in the front office wanted to trade Klay for Love, West raised his voice and threatened to resign if they made such a move.

I wouldn't call West a messiah for doing all that, but he spoke some sense into Joe Lacob after he first bought the team. Lacob was a bit delusional at first. He thought he had something special with the David Lee, Monta and Steph trio. West told him that core was nothing special, at least if he was serious about winning.

[buzzkilloton]

Yeah he got us good on this one. I'm still hoping we can get off this deal for pennies and move on. If we dont its going to be a long 4 years with injury prone Blake at 30 making 35+mill a year.

[Spider156]

Yeah he got us good on this one. I'm still hoping we can get off this deal for pennies and move on. If we dont its going to be a long 4 years with injury prone Blake at 30 making 35+mill a year.

Cap space will probably increase some more this offseason after the gambling news came out. Blake will be fine. We need to upgrade at PG

[buzzkilloton]

Yeah he got us good on this one. I'm still hoping we can get off this deal for pennies and move on. If we dont its going to be a long 4 years with injury prone Blake at 30 making 35+mill a year.

Cap space will probably increase some more this offseason after the gambling news came out. Blake will be fine. We need to upgrade at PG

67,35,61,58 Blakes games played the past 4 seasons. If by fine you mean playing 75% of the season on a max deal then sure hes going to be fine. Expecting a big man whos had a total of 3 healthy nba seasons(all during his first four in the league) to stay healthy with his history at 30 is very foolish.

Another thing with Blake is he performs on the stat sheet with P+R+A but his impact on teams win totals hasnt been shown over the years. The clippers have done fine without him while CP3 was there(they played much better with just CP3) and this season they actually played better without him as well.

Seems like the nba agreed with my assessment of him being the pistons were the market for the guy. SVG was on his way out if something magical didnt happen and Gores is just one of the dumbest owners in basketball and wanted to sell seats. I just hope the new GM comes in and has the balls to convince r owner to get rid of him similar to how West convinced Ballmer to get rid of him.

[The Penguin]

The Clippers can clear the deck, hit the lotto hard for a couple years and be in every single FA pitch meeting simply due to being in LA.

If we had signed Blake outright last summer it would be the single biggest Piston FA signing ever. Horford isn’t an A-lister by any means, everything fell right and we couldn’t get mentioned as anything more than the “mystery team”. It’s frustrating we couldnt close as a playoff team and bump that pick down a bit, but the reality is before the deal and after the deal, we still desperately need legitimate perimeter playmaking. We were capped out before and after the deal.

Taking Kennard over Mitchell hurt the franchise way worse than the Blake trade. If we had Dre / Blake / Mitchell and Mitchell was allowed to develop, we could be shopping Stanley / contracts / draft picks for a legitimate 4th piece that could push us to the finish line in a Lebronless East. Kennard even at his ceiling is not going to be that type of player.

[Spider156]

The Clippers can clear the deck, hit the lotto hard for a couple years and be in every single FA pitch meeting simply due to being in LA.

If we had signed Blake outright last summer it would be the single biggest Piston FA signing ever. Horford isn’t an A-lister by any means, everything fell right and we couldn’t get mentioned as anything more than the “mystery team”. It’s frustrating we couldnt close as a playoff team and bump that pick down a bit, but the reality is before the deal and after the deal, we still desperately need legitimate perimeter playmaking. We were capped out before and after the deal.

Taking Kennard over Mitchell hurt the franchise way worse than the Blake trade. If we had Dre / Blake / Mitchell and Mitchell was allowed to develop, we could be shopping Stanley / contracts / draft picks for a legitimate 4th piece that could push us to the finish line in a Lebronless East. Kennard even at his ceiling is not going to be that type of player.

I agree with everything here. Not getting Mitchell was the mistake not the Blake trade. And to add to your post, even if we had 40m in cap space AND all the talent we have now we'd still not sign anyone special.

[coordinator0]

If we had Dre / Blake / Mitchell and Mitchell was allowed to develop

I have my doubts. At least if that for this past season.

[The Penguin]

The Clippers can clear the deck, hit the lotto hard for a couple years and be in every single FA pitch meeting simply due to being in LA.

If we had signed Blake outright last summer it would be the single biggest Piston FA signing ever. Horford isn’t an A-lister by any means, everything fell right and we couldn’t get mentioned as anything more than the “mystery team”. It’s frustrating we couldnt close as a playoff team and bump that pick down a bit, but the reality is before the deal and after the deal, we still desperately need legitimate perimeter playmaking. We were capped out before and after the deal.

Taking Kennard over Mitchell hurt the franchise way worse than the Blake trade. If we had Dre / Blake / Mitchell and Mitchell was allowed to develop, we could be shopping Stanley / contracts / draft picks for a legitimate 4th piece that could push us to the finish line in a Lebronless East. Kennard even at his ceiling is not going to be that type of player.

I agree with everything here. Not getting Mitchell was the mistake not the Blake trade. And to add to your post, even if we had 40m in cap space AND all the talent we have now we'd still not sign anyone special.

And that’s largely my point. What’s the opportunity cost? Stan operated with cap space for the majority of his tenure and we couldn’t get guys anywhere near Blake’s level to take it. Stan missing on every single draft pick and giving terrible MLE or higher deals to role players are what’s crippling.