The 2021-22 NBA season is over for the LA
Clippers despite a 42-40 record. While the Play-In Tournament
resulted in a disappointing end and a loss of a playoff spot a year the Clippers made the conference finals for the first time in franchise history, it was a memorable season, nonetheless.
“We’re building the right culture, going in the right direction,” Clippers head coach Tyronn Lue said after Friday night’s season-ending loss to the New Orleans Pelicans. “Our next step is we just got to stay healthy at some point hopefully.”
To recap: That’s a major re-signing, a significant injury, a head coach change, major star acquisitions, multiple lottery picks from the previous time the Clippers missed the postseason, a front-office shakeup and a trade to end an era.
Don’t expect any of that in the next six months. When Lue was asked about who he wants back from his roster, he said “everybody.”
“We get our main guys back. I mean, we can be dangerous,” Lue said Friday night in what was his de facto exit interview. “Health is part of it. We got to stay healthy, continue to work. Like I said, right now we got what we got. Proud of our guys in the locker room. Nothing to hang their heads about.”
The Clippers have six potential free agents, not including expiring two-way contracts
Jay Scrubb and
Xavier Moon.
Robert Covington,
Isaiah Hartenstein and
Rodney Hood are unrestricted free agents, while
Amir Coffey is a restricted free agent.
Ivica Zubac has a team option and
Nicolas Batum has a player option. Here’s a Clippers depth chart entering the offseason that accounts for those temporarily vacated spots, followed by six offseason queries to be addressed:
Kawhi Leonard’s return to health
The door remained opened for Kawhi Leonard to return at some point this postseason after Leonard spent the entire 2021-22 regular season rehabbing from July knee surgery to repair a partially torn right ACL suffered last June in Game 4 against the
Utah Jazz. But the door closed as the Clippers failed to earn a seven-game series, marking the first time ever that a team with Leonard failed to qualify for the postseason.
Of course, the silver lining is as shiny as it could be for Leonard, at least physically. If Leonard is ready for the regular-season opener in October, he will be 15 months removed from surgery. The mental hurdle of recovering from an ACL injury is not as objective, and the only way to clear that obstacle is to get back to playing consistently.
But the setback Leonard had of not being able to play at all in his age-30 season sets him up for another comeback. The last time Leonard missed a significant number of games in a season was his final year with the
San Antonio Spurs in 2017-18. That season, he was limited to just nine games as he dealt with right quadriceps tendinopathy. After scoring 19 points in 28 minutes in a win over Denver on Jan. 13, he never played again in a Spurs uniform. Leonard was then traded to the
Toronto Raptors, played 60 regular-season games while never playing on zero days’ rest, and ultimately won his second NBA Finals MVP before coming home to the Clippers.
That is the best-case scenario for the Clippers, and Leonard has a partner in George who will also be looking to bounce back after a season sidetracked by a long-term injury. George
entering health and safety protocols the morning of a Play-In elimination game was terrible luck, but George’s silver lining is that the torn UCL in his right elbow that limited him to 31 games and 1,077 minutes healed. George won’t have the mental hurdle entering next season that Leonard will have.
Leonard and George re-establishing the on-court synergy that was peaking right when Leonard was hurt will be a season-long project in 2022-23. Both will at least have a full offseason to physically be ready and there won’t be the pressure of either being in a contract year since both have player options in the 2024 offseason.
Clippers point guards
Multiple players spoke Friday night after the Clippers were eliminated by the Pelicans, with the last being power forward Marcus Morris Sr. When Morris was asked about what the Clippers could add to be a title contender, Morris said it was a tough question on a night full of them. But he also had a direct answer.
“I would say one of our biggest needs is a backup point guard,” Morris said. “We played a lot of the season without one.”
To Morris’ point,
Reggie Jacksonstarted all 75 of the games he appeared in this past season at point guard. In seven games that Jackson missed, the Clippers started
Eric Bledsoe four times when Jackson was in health and safety protocols and
Terance Mannthree times when Jackson was rested in the final month of the season.
Rookie Keon Johnson and COVID-hardship signee Moon were Bledsoe’s backups when Jackson was in protocols, while Moon re-joined the team to end the season on a two-way contract for Jackson’s last two rest days. Bledsoe and Johnson were traded in February to Portland as part of the deal that sent
Norman Powell and Robert Covington to the Clippers, and Mann was entrusted with backup point guard duties exclusively for the final two months of the season.
Mann was basically the backup point guard when the season started as well, since Jackson and Bledsoe were in the starting lineup together for the first month of the season.
Justise Winslowwas talked about in training camp as a potential backup point guard, but his shooting difficulties left him out of the rotation for an extended period of time, and he was a power forward when he did play prior to being included in the Portland trade.
“T. Mann did a great job stepping in, being a backup PG,” Morris said. “The whole season we didn’t have a backup point guard. That’s probably the biggest thing.”
Despite the concerns, it wouldn’t be surprising if the Clippers run it back with the same group of ballhandlers. The anticipated return of the Leonard-George tandem theoretically limits who will handle the ball anyway. Jackson’s usage should plummet in a good way next season, where he could possibly return to 2021 postseason levels of efficiency.
Powell’s presence on the roster puts another potentially high usage ballhandler on the floor. And the wing surplus means that players would play out of their traditional position but play an appropriate role in a nominal position. In those cases, you could see Mann as a nominal backup point guard but doing all of the things that Mann does across positions.
The Clippers also have Jason Preston, a 2021 second-round pick who missed his entire rookie season due to October foot surgery. Frank called Preston the second-best passer in his draft class behind Oklahoma City lottery pick
Josh Giddey.
If a veteran is going to come in and fill the position of a backup point guard, it will probably come at the expense of one of the many wing or wing-adjacent players on the team. And even then, it is probably more important to the Clippers that the supporting players around Leonard and George can shoot and/or defend more than run pick-and-roll offense and need to be protected elsewhere.
When does the trade come?
In the last five seasons, the Clippers have moved a veteran each time. This past winter saw
Serge Ibaka relocated after the trade that sent out Bledsoe, Winslow and the rookie Johnson. In 2021, Williams was traded. In 2020, Morris was acquired in a trade that cost a first-round pick. In 2019,
Tobias Harris was traded to Philadelphia. In 2018, Griffin was moved to Detroit. That’s every midseason of the front office era led by Frank and general manager Michael Winger.
So, who is next? And when?
I’d list Leonard and George as untouchable, for obvious reasons. They are the era that this team is in, and it’s only at the midpoint, with both under contract for at least two more seasons and an option for a third. Jackson is entering a contract year, but I’d be surprised to see the Clippers trade a player who adds so much to the team’s culture and chemistry. Powell just got here. Mann’s extension doesn’t even kick in until 2023. Preston and
Brandon Boston Jr. are in development. The respective options for Zubac and Batum leave them as tradeable options if exercised, but if those options are picked up, they’re extremely team friendly.
That leaves Morris and Kennard.
Morris is under contract for two more seasons and will be 33 years old when next season starts. That’s the same age Patrick Beverley was when the Clippers traded him last offseason. If Beverley was a durability concern for the Clippers, then that may be something that is a factor for Morris as well. 2020 and 2021 were truncated offseasons due to the coronavirus pandemic, and Morris’ knees weren’t ready to begin either season. Morris missed the first eight games of the 2020-21 season and 15 of the first 17 games of 2021-22 season due to right knee soreness.
But to Morris’ credit, he did not miss another game due to injury after returning on Thanksgiving week. On the floor, Morris was Lue’s primary option after timeouts and he was still a decent 3-point shooter (36.7 percent, down from 47.3 percent in 2021-22) despite moving up several spots on the scouting report with Leonard and George missing so much time. Off the floor, Morris was a steady leader in the locker room.
“I’m naturally a leader,” Morris said Friday night. “The early part of the season I missed a lot of games, too. Maybe that was the quiet time. Once I started playing, started leading, kind of bringing the guys together. I thought we had a really good group. Locker room presence was really well.”
Kennard is also under contract for two more seasons, with the Clippers holding a team option for 2024-25. There
wasn’t a more accurate 3-point shooter in the NBA last season than Kennard, who made 44.9 percent of his career-high 423 attempts. LA’s offense was 2.9 points per 100 possessions better with Kennard on the floor, which was behind only Covington and Hartenstein among the 13 Clippers who played more than 500 minutes this season. Kennard’s defense also improved after Lue was constantly concerned about Kennard’s fit on that end of the floor in 2020-21.
The Clippers were hurt by Kennard’s absence in the Play-In games, even though Powell was in the second unit. George, Powell and Kennard played only one game together all season, and it was against a
Sacramento Kings team that had nothing to play for this month.
Like Morris, I’d expect Kennard to be in training camp with the Clippers. But that won’t stop the trade machines from mentioning things like the fact that Morris and Kennard’s figures for 2022-23 match up with the $30 million owed to Sacramento point guard
De’Aaron Fox.
It’s also worth mentioning that the Clippers have two traded player exceptions. One is for $8.2 million and expires in mid-July. The other is for $9.7 million and expires in February 2023.
And if course we need a traditional pg
