The Clippers have added center Moses Brown and guards Xavier Moon and Jay Scrubb to their 2022 training camp roster, the team announced Saturday evening. Just as the Clippers’ Summer League team, featuring Moon and Scrubb, got set to take the floor for their opening game of the Las Vegas Summer League, the team’s official PR twitter announced the three additions to the training camp roster.

Brown is a 7’2″, 22-year-old free agent center with three years of NBA experience who I wrote at length about last night. Moon leveraged three straight MVP awards in the Canadian Elite Basketball League into the starting point guard spot on the Agua Caliente Clippers last season. With the team in need of backcourt depth due to COVID outages and then the Eric Bledsoe trade, he found himself playing relatively well in 10 games for the Clippers last season and earning a two-way contract. However, he’s not a prospect at 27 years old, and seems unlikely to have a path to the opening night roster behind Reggie Jackson, John Wall, and Jason Preston. Jay Scrubb was the 55th overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft and has been on a two-way contract for the last two years, but has scarcely played NBA or G-League minutes due to two significant injuries. I would guess that Scrubb is also unlikely to have a path to the opening night roster, though his odds might be better than Moon’s since he’s just 21 years old and has NBA size on the wing.

More broadly, these moves are interesting because the Clippers are now officially facing a training camp roster crunch. NBA teams are only allowed to have 15 standard contracts + 2 two-way deals once opening night hits, but during the off-season the limit is raised to 20 contracts of any kind (including exhibit 10 deals and training camp invitations). LAC currently has 14 guaranteed contracts (Jackson, George, Leonard, Morris, Zubac, Wall, Powell, Mann, Batum, Covington, Preston, Kennard, Coffey, and Boston), three exhibit 10 deals (DeVoe, Williamson, and Bean), and three camp invites (Brown, Moon, and Scrubb), making for 20… without including currently unsigned rookie Moussa Diabate, who is a safe bet to be on that 17-player roster on opening night in one capacity or another.

That means that the Clippers have to trim at least one of the 20 guys with a curent deal at some point in order to officially sign Diabate, and frankly, I would expect them to trim two and bring another center into training camp to join the competition to be the team’s insurance big man behind Ivica Zubac. It seems likely that the team will play regular smallball minutes on the second unit throughout the regular season, but that means that the depth big man actually has a pretty important role for a third stringer: any time, over the course of 82 games x 48 minutes, that the team needs a real big and Ivica Zubac is unavailable (fatigue, injury, foul trouble, off night, etc.), that depth big is going to be pressed into duty. Brown has 1300 NBA minutes under his belt, but has been pretty rough, and Diabate is an extremely raw 20-year-old second-round rookie who underwhelmed in his only collegiate season at Michigan. It shouldn’t be a damning criticism of either to say that a championship-caliber team should probably head into the season with a more reliable second-best big man on their roster than a young guy who is more potential than proven.

There is no specific date by which the Clippers have to make any cuts to the current 20-man crew, but one would assume that they’ll want to get Diabate under contract sooner rather than later. The most vulnerable players for cuts certainly seem to be the three exhibit 10 guys, so if I had to guess, I’d say that the Clippers will ride out the next week of Summer League before making any decisions. Once the guys leave Vegas, I’d expect at least one of DeVoe, Williamson, or Bean to get released so the team can sign Diabate (likely to a two-way contract), and if not at the same time, I’d expect a second cut from that trio in the next few weeks as the team identifies another big man to try out for that depth spot.

Clippers add Moses Brown, Xavier Moon, Jay Scrubb to training camp roster
Lucas Hann

According to Andrew Grief of the LA Times, the LA Clippers have extended a qualifying offer to Amir Coffey, making him a restricted free agent, while declining to do so for Jay Scrubb and Xavier Moon, who will both become unrestricted. Spotrac’s Kieth Smith was the first to report on Coffey’s qualifying offer.

With the $2.1M qualifying offer extended, Amir Coffey will now enter restricted free agency. Since the Clippers have Coffey’s bird rights, they are now able to match any offer sheet he signs with another team to retain him using their right of first refusal. Their willingness to do so will depend on the price point and what else the team is up to in the coming days. As it now stands, Coffey is far down an incredibly deep LAC depth chart on an incredibly expensive roster with a luxury tax bill for 2022-23 that will make even Steve Ballmer blush. If another team offered Coffey their non-taxpayer mid-level exception worth $10M+ next season, it’s possible that even the seemingly-infinite-spending Clippers would balk at paying several times that in tax penalties to keep around their 13th man. But other teams have no guarantee that they won’t just be wasting their time should Ballmer be willing to match. And if roster moves bump him up to 11th on the depth chart, and the offer sheet is $6M, it becomes both much more financially palatable to Ballmer to keep him and a bigger on-court loss to let him walk. Amir was a quality rotation player in over 1500 minutes last season, starting 30 games as the team went the entire season without Kawhi Leonard and much of it without Paul George. With those two star wings healthy again, Coffey will have to compete for second unit minutes with more established players likeNorman Powell, Luke Kennard, and Terance Mann, with few options for reprieve by sliding over to point guard (Reggie Jackson, John Wall) or power forward (Marcus Morris, Nicolas Batum, Robert Covington).

However, restricted free agency itself can serve to depress or entirely eliminate a player’s market, especially if teams feel as though pursuing a player is futile because their offer sheet will get matched at any price they are comfortable with. Restricted free agents do get lured away–it seems as though the Knicks will give Jalen Brunson a 4-year/$110M offer sheet this week that the Dallas Mavericks will decline to match–but they far more often stay home. Take, for example, Montrezl Harrell’s restricted free agency when he was a Clipper: Trez was coming off of a great season and surely plenty of teams would have been interested in signing him, but they were hesitant to go over the mid-level exception due to his limitations as a player and knew that the Clippers would match mid-level offers. In the end, Harrell never even signed an offer sheet, negotiating a 2-year, $12M deal directly with the Clippers. If teams feel that the Clippers will simply refuse to let a quality player walk away for nothing, luxury tax be damned, then they might be entirely unwilling to pursue Coffey (who, while a very solid and versatile player, isn’t going to be at the top of free agency boards the way Jalen Brunson is).

Lastly, interested teams could always buy off the Clippers’ right of first refusal by negotiating a sign-and-trade transaction. If they can agree to terms with Coffey but are worried that the Clippers will match their offer sheet, they could offer the Clippers an asset to sign-and-trade Amir to them instead. This can also scare teams off if they have similar players on their free agent target lists that they wouldn’t have to give up additional assets to acquire, but a team might surrender 1 or 2 second-round picks if it meant securing Coffey’s services without concern over the Clippers’ matching ability. Without getting too into the weeds, it’s worth noting that the base year compensation rule limits what Coffey can count for in trade salary matching in such a deal (it doesn’t limit what he can make, just what the Clippers can bring back), so it’s most likely that the team would either just get draft picks back (or perhaps a young prospect on a cheap deal). They could also make a deal work by absorbing a higher-paid player into one of their existing TPEs even though a one-for-one swap for Coffey would be illegal on its own.

As far as Scrubb and Moon go, the Clippers’ decision to pass on making them restricted isn’t wholly unexpected. Xavier Moon brought good vibes as a fill-in emergency point guard last year, both during COVID outbreaks and late in the year after Eric Bledsoe had been traded. But it always seemed likely that the team wouldn’t have a need for him this year, as Jason Preston will be available after missing all of last season due to injury and the team will look to invest as many depth guard minutes as they can into the 33rd pick from the 2021 NBA Draft. If the writing was already on the wall for those reasons, the rumored signing of veteran point guard John Wall cemented Moon’s departure by making point guard minutes even harder to come by.

I think that the Clippers would have likely taken Scrubb back on a two-way deal again for a third season next year, but Law Murray of The Athletic reported that Scrubb wasn’t on board with the arrangement and wanted to try to make the 15-man roster instead. Such is his right: after two years on two-way deals, players are eligible for restricted free agency but only with a qualifying offer for a full NBA deal. If his team doesn’t extend that QO–and the Clippers didn’t–the player enters unrestricted free agency. It’s unclear where Scrubb will end up next year, whether it’s with the Clippers or another NBA team, in training camp or on a two-way, or somewhere in the G-League or Europe, but he will get to choose. The first step: showcasing himself in Summer League with the Clippers in Las Vegas, but with the flexibility to join any team on a two-way deal or in training camp afterwards instead of being locked in to the Clippers.

Clippers extend qualifying offer to Amir Coffey, not Jay Scrubb or Xavier Moon
Lucas Hann

Clippers guard Jay Scrubb underwent surgery to repair the plantar plate in his right foot and will miss the remainder of the 2021-22 NBA season, the team announced Wednesday. The Athletic’s Law Murray was the first to report the news:

It’s a devastating blow for the second-year player, who also missed most of his rookie campaign with a major surgery on the same foot. After being selected 55th overall in the 2020 NBA Draft out of junior college, the first surgery in training camp limited him to just 4 appearances to end the 2020-21 season, twice nabbing a few minutes late in garbage time of a blowout win before playing substantial minutes in the last two games of the year as the Clippers rested their core players and intentionally lost games to manipulate playoff matchups.

This year, Scrubb has made 18 appearances for the Clippers totaling 121 minutes, almost exclusively in the closing minutes of blowout games. He did, however, have one notable contribution to a Clippers win–perhaps their best win of the season. With the team trying to complete a 35-point comeback against the Washington Wizards in January, Lue benched the veterans who had caused the defecit and while Scrubb was not the hero of the night, he made a valuable contribution with 6 early fourth quarter points while some key players were resting to keep the Clippers within striking distance.

LAC now has a rather difficult choice to make with the 21-year-old prospect they took a chance on late in the Draft less than 18 months ago. On one hand, Scrubb will now have played very little in two seasons on the team, showing very little to justify why he would warrant being retained for his third and final two-way eligible season next year. However, he’s had two major surgeries on the same foot during that time, meaning that the gamble the Clippers took in the 2020 Draft (and it was very clear at the time that Scrubb would be a long-term project) hasn’t had much of a chance to yield returns. If the team’s evaluation of Scrubb’s prospects is that he was unlikely to keep his two-way spot next season anyway, they will likely cut him now so they can sign a replacement to that spot for the remainder of this season. It would only make sense to keep him for the next two months if they are 100% committed to having him back in that two-way role next year.

However, even if the team chooses to cut Scrubb, it would by no means eliminate the possibility of him having a future in the NBA or even with the Clippers specifically. Scrubb is averaging over 20 points per game in 12 appearances for the Agua Caliente Clippers in the NBA G-League this season, so once he recovers from his surgery he would likely have a chance to play full-time in the G-League next season and that level of production would put him on the radar of NBA teams looking for call-ups. It’s even possible, depending on the relationship he has with the Clippers organization, that they could take him to the Las Vegas Summer League in July (if he’s recovered by then) and into training camp before either earning a spot back or returning to Agua Caliente.

Jay Scrubb Undergoes Season-Ending Surgery
Lucas Hann

Providing a player preview for Jay Scrubb is tricky–he doesn’t project to have much of a 2021 season in the NBA. If we’re going to see him, it’ll be in future years.

Basic Information

Height: 6’6″
Weight: 220
Position: SG/SF
Age: 20
Years in NBA: Rookie
Key Stats: As a junior college sophomore, averaged 21.9 points, 6.8 rebounds, and 2.7 assists, winning National Junior College Player of the Year.
Contract Status: After being selected with the 55th overall pick as part of the Clippers’ 3-team trade that sent Landry Shamet to Brooklyn and brought Luke Kennard to LA, Scrubb signed a two-way contract.

Expectations

Right now? Absolutely none. Contenders don’t exactly draft for impact in the 50s–in fact, most players taken in this range don’t have NBA careers at all. You also don’t necessarily expect contributions from first-year players who weren’t even playing NCAA D1 (or top-flight European) basketball the year prior. Scrubb’s long-term upside is tantalizing–The Athletic’s Sam Amick loosely suggested that if Jay had gone to Louisville this season instead of staying in the draft that he could have worked his way into the first round conversation as a senior in two years. But even on draft night, it would have been foolish to expect anything more than G-League and garbage time contributions from him as a 20-year-old rookie taken in the late 2nd round and making a massive jump from junior college to the NBA.

Then came the injury news–Scrubb had to have a pin inserted in his right foot, costing him 3-4 months of his rookie year. As hard as that transition from junior college to the world’s best professional league was going to be to begin with–on a stacked team with title aspirations, no less–it would be next to impossible without training camp, pre-season, and early year reps to acclimate to the pace and physicality of NBA play. So, while Scrubb will return with some time left in the season, he’ll just be working on conditioning while still well short of making an NBA impact in terms of ability and comfort. That’s okay. He’s 20, he was a late 2nd, he has clear upside, and he isn’t even taking up a full roster spot or counting against the hard cap. After this redshirt year, it’ll be like the Clippers having a bonus draft pick next season, when they will have their own 1st rounder but no 2nd.

Strengths

Scrubb is extremely athletic and clearly has loads of talent on the offensive end of the floor, scoring essentially at will in junior college. While we can scoff at the level he was playing at compared to other prospects, it’s still not easy to put up the numbers he put up at the level he was playing at–hence the national player of the year award. There’s a lot of work to be done to get him to an NBA level once he’s healthy, but it’s a gamble the Clippers were more than willing to take as part of their new focus on player development given their lack of draft assets in upcoming years.

Weaknesses

Even without the foot surgery, there just isn’t much you can be confident about Scrubb replicating at the NBA level. His strengths–like how he deployed his athleticism on offense–will be tested like they never were before. It’s common for superb athletes to struggle when they reach the league and are facing other superb athletes every night in practice. Nobody in junior college could match Scrubb’s size, movement, and skill. Plenty of guys in the NBA will be able to.

Once he’s proven that his strengths translate well enough to make him a viable NBA prospect, we can actually start to have a conversation about weaknesses and what he needs to do to go from “potential NBA player” to “NBA rotation player.” Right now, he’s still more of a potential potential NBA player–he could be a guy who could be a guy. That’s not to say that I’m down on Scrubb, or dislike the pick, or think he isn’t going to pan out. It’s just being realistic about the work players selected at 55th overall have to do in the early years (if they even get years, for many it’s just months or weeks) of their careers to prove they belong.

Summary

As a rookie, Scrubb will largely be out of sight and out of mind for Clippers fans. We may see a debut in late-season garbage time and get a chance to evaluate him firsthand (or we might get G-League minutes depending on when he’s back and if/when Agua Caliente’s games are played), but this year is a wash for the rookie. It’s a year to watch practices, forge connections in the locker room, watch film with coaches, and sit on the bench during games, absorbing every bit of knowledge he can about the team and Ty Lue’s program. Once we get out of this season–however it ends for LAC–Scrubb will deploy that knowledge to give him a head start in the fight for a roster spot on next year’s team.

Clippers 2020-2021 Player Preview: Jay Scrubb
Lucas Hann