The Lakers got Rui for so cheap that you’d have to think our FO passed for a specific reason (a different deal on its way?).

Honestly Collins would be absolutely perfect for what we need. Hard to understate how important more rebounding from our PF would be. If you can add athleticism too, would be huge.

What about Kuzma? Not high on him?

Unless I’m mistaken (for some reason it’s difficult for me to recognize good defense, I’m working on paying closer attention to it) he’s not a great defender, but he’s an exceptional rebounder and his improvement as a 3-pt shooter has been truly impressive, in my opinion.

Collins or Kuzma, and maybe Conley or Reid (Conley as long as we don’t include Luke or a 1st), man I’d be thrilled.

I’ve been shouting this since last season, Lue needs to stop depending on point guards and create an offense. The Clippers don’t need a point guard.

Clippers need:

1. Backup 5 or upgrade 5
2. Upgrade at 4
3. Dump Wall

Everyone except Kawhi and Mann should be on the table.

1. John Collins – athleticism, youth, not incompetent offensively or defensively, and shores up our biggest weaknesses
2. Fred Van Vleet – I still don’t think we need a “real PG” but FVV is good enough to where I think he’d make the team better regardless of position. He’s undersized but not a defensively liability like Wall or Norm.
3. Jared Vanderbilt – I don’t think he’s available, but if he is sign me up. He’s not as good as Collins but he’s younger and cheaper and fills our needs just like Collins does.
4. Alex Caruso – haven’t heard anything about him being available either, but Chicago has Dosunmu and White as their backcourt of the future, and DDR and LaVine as their present. For us, our backcourt players (depending on how you classify Mann) are all pretty bad defensively, and Caruso would change that immediately. Dude reminds me of PBev and brings some much needed “I actually give a fuck every night” energy.
5. Kelly Olynyk – similar to Reid but a more consistent shooter for his career, and a decent defender/rebounder.
6. Naz Reid – see Rob’s analysis lol.
7. PJ Washington/Jalen McDaniels – we need youth, athleticism, and height. These guys aren’t in Collins’ tier for athleticism (very, very few are), but MM, Batum, and RoCo are going to decline eventually and we need a successor who we know can play at an NBA level (i.e. Moose hasn’t shown us enough yet for me to be confident he can handle NBA minutes right away).
8. Hart – we all know enough about Hart to know he’d fit in perfectly again for us.

That being said, of course this list depends on the price the asking teams want for these guys – if FVV is somehow cheaper to acquire than Collins I’d slide him up, but that seems unlikely.