According to Michael Scotto of HoopsHype, the LA Clippers and New York Knicks have discussed a trade for Knicks big man Nerlens Noel. Noel is slated to make $9.24M next season, interfering with New York’s plans to clear cap room to offer a contract to Dallas Mavericks restricted free agent guard Jalen Brunson that is big enough to scare the Mavs out of matching–possibly in the range of $100M over four years. The Clippers have a $9.7M trade exception from when they moved Serge Ibaka’s salary at the February deadline, which would allow them to absorb Noel’s contract without sending the Knicks salary in return.

That basic framework makes sense for both teams, so it’s understandable that the two sides would be engaged in at least preliminary discussions. However, determining the finer details gets murkier. Presumably, the Clippers would be interested in Noel as a replacement for backup center Isaiah Hartenstein. Hartenstein likely played himself out of the Clippers’ price range last year–they can only re-sign him for 120% of the minimum without using their taxpayer mid-level exception, and even that $6.4M taxpayer MLE salary could be quite a bit short of what other teams are offering. With the news that John Wall agreed to a buyout with the Houston Rockets and will join the Clippers, signs seem to point to that taxpayer MLE going to Wall (though that hasn’t been confirmed), which I would read as an indication that the Clippers already have accepted that Hartenstein will be taking more money elsewhere in free agency.

Of course, that’s just guesswork at this point. It’s still entirely possible that Wall–who was slated to make $47.4M with the Rockets next season and gave back $6.5M in the buyout–is coming to the Clippers on a league minimum salary and leaving the taxpayer MLE open for Hartenstein (or someone else). But, him giving back $6.5M to sign a new deal worth $6.4M would line up nicely. It’s also possible that Hartenstein is amenable to taking a paycut to stay with the Clippers. Last summer, Nicolas Batum re-signed for well under market value in the same situation so that the Clippers could keep their taxpayer MLE open for another player. Some key differences, though, are that Batum has already made over $150M in his NBA career while Hartenstein’s career earnings are just around $5.5M, and that Batum was still getting paid $9M/year from his Charlotte Hornets buyout. Hartenstein taking such a cut at this point in his career would really be a staggering move, and frankly feels like unrealistic wishful thinking.

So, assuming Wall takes that taxpayer MLE and Hartenstein walks, the Clippers would now have that backup C opening where engaging with the Knicks about Noel would make sense. But is the deal worth it? Minimum salary veteran centers are typically available in bulk in the free agency pool, and the Clippers would be able to find someone from a solid list of candidates at a fraction of the cost of absorbing Noel, especially when factoring in the ever-increasing luxury tax penalties Steve Ballmer faces as the Clippers’ team salary rises.

Noel is coming off of a challenging year with the Knicks where he played just 25 games. He missed time in training camp and preseason due to knee soreness and couldn’t get healthy all year, being listed out due to soreness in both knees throughout the season as well as spending time in the league’s health and safety protocols, needing extra time for reconditioning after clearing protocols, struggling with lower back soreness, and finally missing the last two months of the season with left foot soreness that was eventually upgraded to plantar fasciitis. Noel also missed his rookie season in 2013-14 due to an ACL tear and played just 30 games in the 2017-18 season due to a thumb injury that required surgery.

While Noel is a good backup C and capable fill-in starter when healthy, his skill level doesn’t make him a spectacular, can’t-miss addition to the Clippers on paper–merely a good one. With a slate of players like JaVale McGee and Hassan Whiteside available for cheap in free agency, there is little need for the Clippers to aggressively pursue a deal for a much more expensive backup center with notable injury struggles. The Knicks, on the other hand, are desperate to dump one more contract to get to their target number for Brunson’s offer sheet, and moving undesired contracts for nothing in return can be challenging. Case-in-point: the Knicks had to give the Detroit Pistons 13th overall pick Jalen Duren to dump Kemba Walker’s $9.2M deal in the draft last week as part of this same cost-cutting effort. So in any Noel trade, it would appear that the Knicks need the Clippers much more than the Clippers need the Knicks. The Clippers have easy pathways towards filling the backup C slot in other ways, while the Knicks would be challenged to find similar avenues to offload salary without attaching draft compensation.

Nailing down the fair additional value for the Knicks to include is tricky. While they gave a lottery pick to offload Walker’s $9.2M to the Pistons, there’s a much more realistic use scenario for Noel on the Clippers. I would expect that the Clippers would try to get either a protected first or two high-value 2nds in exchange for absorbing Noel. The Knicks currently have their own 2023 1st round pick in addition to protected 2023 first round picks from Dallas, Detroit, and Washington. They also have a solid collection of future 2nds from different teams, including 2023 and 2024 Detroit 2nd round picks that the Clippers have already possessed before trading away. If the Knicks offer a future first–even a low-value one–the Clippers should absolutely take it to absorb Noel’s deal. If the Knicks are holding off, I wouldn’t be opposed to the Clippers taking a pair of 2nds, but they should probably be patient as well to see how else they can put that TPE, which doens’t expire until the trade deadline, to work.

NBA Trade Rumors: Clippers, Knicks discussing Nerlens Noel
Lucas Hann

With things heating up around the NBA off-season this week, it’s time to really get serious about following all of the rumors and scuttle as we head in to Thursday’s 2022 NBA Draft–which is of course not only where we’ll (probably) meet the newest Clipper rookie, but the second-busiest trade day of the year behind the deadline in February.

I personally think it’s likely that the Clippers will be working a lot of angles trying to make a trade happen in the next couple of weeks. They have a (distant) future first available, too many solid veteran role players to fit into one rotation next season, and a significant incentive to try to add a third “star” (this guy might not actually be a “star” or All-Star, but someone who would be a clear #3 or #4 on this team) as they try to win the 2023 NBA Championship in what will hopefully be a healthy season for Paul George (32 years old) and Kawhi Leonard (turns 31 this month).

The problem with trying to approach this from an analysis perspective is that the question is almost too open-ended to tackle. George and Leonard are both elite two-way players who can play multiple positions, switch across 4 or 5 positions defensively, and initiate the offense or play off the ball. There aren’t very many high-end starters in the NBA who you’d look at and go “we can’t build a lineup around PG, Kawhi, and ________.” And the Clippers’ depth, even as they thin it out a bit in this kind of consolidation trade, is pretty well-suited to adapt to whoever joins the team. I love both Reggie Jackson and Ivica Zubac and I hope both are Clippers for a long time, but I wouldn’t have major reservations about moving either to the second unit if the Clippers got the right guy to upgrade their spot in the starting lineup. So, instead of coming up with a list of 5 or 10 names myself, I figured why not approach such an open-ended question by letting you guys pick the targets? I asked on twitter and here were your ideas:

The Illegal Ones

Okay, let’s start out with some basics about sign-and-trades, especially with regards to DeAndre Ayton, who I get a lot of questions about. Acquiring a signed-and-traded player hard caps you (sending a signed-and-traded player to another team does not). The hard cap this year (if triggered) is $143M, a number the Clippers already exceed by more than 20M before presumably big raises coming for Nico Batum, Isaiah Hartenstein, and Amir Coffey. To fit in $30M for Ayton and fill out the roster after the S&T, they’d have to shed about $60M in salary first. It’s just not possible–and the takeaway here is an important one: whoever we want the Clippers to target has to already be under contract. The same principle applies for the second trade, where Jusuf Nurkic (who is reportedly staying in Portland) would be signed-and-traded to the Clippers.

Poaching Pacers

Everyone wants to talk about Malcolm Brogdon this off-season, and it makes sense why. He’s a good but sub-All-Star player (i.e. gettable without a hefty price tag), versatile offensively and defensively to fit around stars, with trade value lower than his on-court value due to health (only 55 games played per season in his career), contract (a rather hefty $68M due over the next 3 years), age (already 29, limiting his market to teams that are good now), and team situation (the Pacers are probably leaning into stinking and being young for a little bit). He makes sense as a Clippers target because he’s a big, switchable, defensive-minded guard, but one wonders if his health woes and inconsistent three-point shooting (only 31.2% last season) make him slightly less attractive to LAC.

Another thing to consider is that adding Brogdon, who would presumably start at point guard, pushes Reggie Jackson to the second unit where he’d compete for minutes with Norman Powell, Terance Mann, Luke Kennard, and Amir Coffey. That’s… a lot of competition. Of the frameworks above, I think Francisco’s is best–Morris and Kennard (and perhaps that 2028 first round pick) outgoing, presumably with the younger Kennard being a piece for Indiana moving forward and Morris potentially going to a third team.

This is certainly an interesting one but to be honest, I’m just not that into Myles Turner. First of all, he’s a dreadful rebounder for a center (11.8 rebounds per 100 possessions vs Zubac’s 17.0 number), and he misses about half of his team’s games and spends most of his minutes floating around the perimeter being a below-average three-point shooter. He’s a massive athleticism upgrade over Zu as a rim-roller (if you can convince him to go into the lane and risk taking contact) and a much more mobile team defender and rim protector. As long as he’s on the court, he’s an upgrade over Zubac, but his availability and warts leave me thinking he’s still a guy Ty Lue would be benching down the stretch of key games. That’s not quite what I’m looking for if I’m going to give up that 2028 first round pick.

I’ve always liked McConnell as a backup point guard (the caliber of guy who you trust to help you win shifts all year but can afford to trim out of the rotation in the playoffs), and I wouldn’t rule out him being available for next to nothing this summer–he’s 30, the Pacers are rebuilding, and the three years remaining on his deal are probably something they could do without. Getting him into a TPE makes sense if things up the roster shake out where you might have a role for him (otherwise, Ballmer isn’t paying like $50M in tax penalties for TJ to be your 3rd stringer). Sending Morris into Indiana’s cap space makes little sense to me, though, since he’s also in his 30s and owed a lot of money, and absorbing him would require renouncing their bird rights to TJ Warren. I’m going with a no on this deal but a maybe on absorbing TJ McConnell into the TPE depending on what happens with the rest of the roster.

Kyle Kuzma

Kuzma is probably my preferred “realistic” target this off-season. He has really taken huge strides as a defender, he’ll only be 27 next season, and he really fits the Clippers’ style of play as a versatile two-way forward. I also love that he’s an excellent rebounder (he grabs more than Myles Turner) and can switch defensively, which will really help keep smallball lineups viable. He’s already won a championship in a significant role, which is a nice perk. It’s possible the Wizards don’t want to move him at all, since they want to have him alongside Bradley Beal and Kristaps Porzingis next season. But he’s going to demand a lot of money next summer and the Wizards have young forwards who they took in the lottery trying to get playing time.

I don’t think Luke Kennard for Kuzma is going to intrigue Washington straight-up, although the Wizards’ evaluation of Luke could be a big factor here. @Gespacho4All’s framework, which incorporates the “Morris to Miami for Robinson + 1st” rumor we’ve heard since the deadline, has been one of my favorites to toy around with the last few weeks. I’d also be receptive to keeping Robinson on the Clippers (despite his unfavorable contract) and sending Kennard to Washington, if they prefer. The downside is that trading Morris and Kennard to bring back Robinson and Kuzma doesn’t actually help much with the Clippers’ logjams.

Rudy Gobert

Rudy Gobert is another name that gets brought up a lot, with a Utah Jazz breakup this off-season feeling inevitable, and I get why. He’s been the most impactful night-in, night-out defender in the league for years, and the concerns that he’s “played off the floor” in the playoffs are mostly misattributed–teams go small and he can’t be in two places at once (both protecting the rim because his teammates can’t stay in front of a cone, and covering a corner shooter). When tasked with switches where he just has to guard a star perimeter player one-on-one on an island and not worry about covering multiple players, I actually find him impressive. My bigger issue is offensively, where he’s a substantial downgrade from Zubac. He takes fewer shots (despite being Utah’s highest-paid player while Zu is LAC’s garbage man), almost never scores outside of 3 feet, and is substantially worse from an assist/turnover perspective. Utah’s downfall with Rudy in the playoffs isn’t guarding smallball, but punishing it on the other end: he’s woefully ineffective in the post, even against smaller defenders, and his teammates have learned over the years to not even pass it to him when he has a guard sealed on the block.

The upgrade defensively is miles bigger than the downgrade offensively, but when I watch the Clippers, I am really hesitant to say their big move should be to get less offensive versatility from their center than they’re getting with Zubac. If you’re gonna go for it, though, @pm_aji has the right framework: it will take at least three of the Clippers’ medium-sized contracts to make the math work, and even including the 2028 1st might not be enough if other teams offer frameworks with stronger centerpieces.

John Collins

Collins was the most popular name to come up, which makes sense because he was the guy most clearly in Clippers twitter’s sights earlier this year at the trade deadline (when Brogdon wasn’t trade-eligible due to his recent contract extension). A legit PF with enough shot-blocking chops to cover small ball C minutes, he’s young, athletic, and versatile on both ends of the court. It’s never quite all come together (overall, he’s been a pretty poor defender despite seeming like he should be able to be an elite one), and the Hawks are in a strange place as an organization with lots of money committed to players who are good, but probably not quite good enough to take them where they want to go.

I’d love Collins and would give up pretty much everything the Clippers have to give up to make it happen (although trading Terance Mann would kill me inside), but we’ve been down this road before. I don’t think the Hawks are going to move a player of his caliber for spare parts and distant future so that the wheels can spin in the mud next year with Luke Kennard and Marcus Morris instead. If I had to guess, they view him as a centerpiece to package for an upgrade (maybe even Rudy Gobert) to re-shape their team around Trae Young going forward.

Miscellaneous

Jarrett Allen is great, and was an All-Star last year and I think a legitimate DPOY/All-Defense candidate if he hadn’t gotten hurt down the stretch, which hurt his candidacy due to games missed and plummeted the Cavs in the standings. He’s one of the big three of Cleveland’s young core (with Darius Garland and Evan Mobley) and I think he’s next-to-untouchable in trade talks. If they entertain anything for him, it would be to package for a bigger star, not to get a package from the Clippers.

This one is so boring that it might just be reasonable, though I think you would probably substitute another player in for Thybulle, who has just enough value and upside that the Sixers would probably hang on to him. I’d suggest Georges Niang, an only-fine veteran backup PF on an expiring $3.5M deal whose role would be entirely eliminated by adding Morris anyway. Green tore his ACL in the playoffs, so he’s done for most (if not all) of next season and turns 35 this week.

You’re basically just swapping Morris for some expiring dead money and a first, which actually might be better value than the Miami package (Duncan Robinson + 1st) that requires taking on long-term salary. The real question is what else the Clippers do. I don’t think they’re going to just cut Green, let Niang be a third stringer, and use the 23rd pick. Does that pick + Kennard + LAC 2028 1st do enough to get Washington’s interest for Kuzma? Now we’re talking.

We’ve got issues right off the bat here with Mike Scott’s inclusion. Would he agree to a sign-and-trade? Sure, but only because he’s probably not going to be cashing NBA checks next year and this gives him a free $10M. Bringing Buddy Hield in doesn’t move the needle for the Clippers and makes the backup wing logjam weirder since now there’s a guy making $20M, and pick #23 isn’t tempting enough to deal with all of that. The good news is that I can absolutely see the clear logic here for both Indiana (get a little younger/cheaper shooting specialist) and Philly (flip dead money + #23 to get a veteran contributor). But it doesn’t quite come full circle for the Clippers.

I’m a big Mike Conley fan and I think he would help the Clippers in spots, but at this stage in his career the defense is completely gone and the offensive burst is quickly deteriorating (though he’s still smart as hell with the ball and potent from three). I’d go as far as to say that if you assume Reggie Jackson’s efficiency is going to go back to 2020-21 levels playing off of stars instead of being the star like he was this season, Jackson to Conley is a lateral move or just a slight upgrade. Going one-for-one on rotation guys still leaves the Clippers with a crowded roster, too.

The Wild Ones

This is a pretty fun/ny trade that makes a whole mess of the Utah Jazz (between Lowry, Conley, Herro, Clarkson, Kennard, and Robinson, they’d be playing 48 minutes of 3-guard lineups with very, very little defense). Ultimately, I think Utah trades Rudy and keeps Donovan, although this is a helluva value for Miami (losing Lowry, who is old and had a dud first year there, and Duncan, who they want to dump anyway, to upgrade from Herro to Donovan Mitchell is wild).

(retching sounds)

This is a wild one to even think about, and of course it’s extremely imbalanced and unlikely. But we have seen in recent years that stars run the NBA and they control their own destinies. If the Nets spurn Kyrie and KD tells them he’s out and the Clippers are where he wants to go, then sure. Go ahead and throw in Terance Mann plus swap rights for other future LAC 1sts (it would be 2027 swap, 2028 1st, 2029 swap). I would guess that it’s unlikely, even by “star forcing his way out” standards, first of all because he has 4 more years on his contract, and second because if he did ask out and had any teams on his list besides LAC, they would for the most part be able to give more attractive packages back to Brooklyn. Combining the two, even if a team like Miami wasn’t on his list, they’d be happy to make a massive offer and then try to make it work once KD got there.

I think Timberwolves fans would yell and scream if you suggest this, but maybe it’s not that crazy. That team desperately needs to defend and I would say that overall, KAT and Gobert are pretty even. The Clippers, of course, give up a lot by adding in Norm and the 2028 1st, but if a guy like KAT becomes available you accept that the trade is going to cost you. It’s Utah who really get nothing out of this, just Morris (who is worse than their current PF Bogdanovic) and Zubac (a severe downgrade from Gobert) with no future assets. If things are truly so dire with Rudy’s trade value that that’s the best Utah can do, I think they’ll just keep him and try to make it work with Donovan, a new coach, and some tweaks to the supporting cast. But my intuition right now is that they’ll be able to get a good young player as the centerpiece of a return for Gobert.

Kind of like the Jarrett Allen trade, I think the Kings clearly indicated with the Tyrese Haliburton trade that they “chose” Fox and are hoping to have Fox and Sabonis be the stars of a squad that they believe can compete for a playoff spot. I don’t think it’s going to work, but it’ll be 1.5-2.5 years before the Kings front office gives up and they become available for trades.

Clippers Twitter Trade Mailbag: Reading Your Trade Ideas
Lucas Hann

With the 2022 NBA Finals between the Boston Celtics and Golden State Warriors concluded, the league will officially shift to a place where the Clippers have already been for quite some time: the off-season. On the surface, the Clippers actually have very little work to do–10 of the 15 players who were on their NBA roster last season are under contract for next season, and retaining the four potential free agents who the team is interested in keeping (sorry, Rodney Hood) should be relatively straightforward. It helps, of course, that they signed Robert Covington to a 2-year, $24 million dollar extension earlier in the off-season to avoid him being a free agent as well.

That framework allows the Clippers to explore some upgrade possibilities this off-season, rather than simply trying to scrape together a roster for next season. Including a few guys who aren’t yet 100% secured for next year, the team has 12 proven rotation-caliber players. It’s a testament to the team’s depth that they were one of the deepest teams in the NBA last season while missing Kawhi Leonard for the entire 2021-22 campaign and Paul George for over half of it. Those injuries created a playing time void that was filled by guys like Terance Mann, Luke Kennard, Amir Coffey, and newcomer Robert Covington, all of whom acquitted themselves well as significant rotation players. Then there’s deadline acquisition Norman Powell, who hardly played for LAC due to a broken foot but figures to be a major part of their plans going forward. All things considered, it seems essentially impossible to keep everyone happy with their role for a full, hopefully mostly healthy season, putting a little pressure on the Clippers to find some kind of consolidation trade that nets them one higher-value player (either due to starpower or age/upside/contract/skillset) in exchange for two or more of their current guys. And if (when?) they make such a trade, the ripple effects will be significant down the roster. That means that the number one item on the Clippers’ agenda right now has to be…

1) Searching For The Big One

The Clippers probably are a “third star” short of being the best version of themselves. I don’t think they need a better third-best player to win a title, but I certainly don’t think it would hurt. He doesn’t necessarily have to be a high-volume scorer, either–Golden State’s Steph Curry/Klay Thompson/Draymond Green combination and Boston’s Jayson Tatum/Jaylen Brown/Marcus Smart trio both contain a player not as known for his offensive prowess. But both Thompson and Smart (for my money, the #3 on each team) are head-and-shoulders ahead of anyone on the Clippers’ roster not named Kawhi Leonard and Paul George (the same is true for the third-best player on the 2021 champs, Jrue Holiday). You can say that the Clippers have a better star duo, and that will certainly have to be true for them to win the 2023 title, and you can say that they have superior depth as well. But depth just doesn’t matter as much on the biggest stage. In a pivotal NBA Finals game 5, Boston played a 7-man rotation while the Warriors went with 8. I love Amir Coffey, but Amir Coffey being a better 11th man than Nik Stauskas and Damion Lee wouldn’t impact a potential LAC-BOS or LAC-GSW series.

In the pursuit of a championship, the Clippers’ extreme depth is most certainly expendable in exchange for even marginal upgrades at the top of the rotation, getting just a bit better in the roles that play 40 minutes in must-win games. Rather than spending a ton of time zeroing in on potential targets, let’s take a look at where the current Clippers fall in the “building a trade package” calculus:

• Untouchable: Paul George and Kawhi Leonard. We aren’t going backwards here, folks.
• Untradeable: Nico Batum, Isaiah Hartenstein, Amir Coffey, Jay Scrubb. Personal preferences aside, pending free agents can’t be traded, and outgoing sign-and-trades as part of a package to bring back a bigger name seem pretty unlikely (although with Amir an outgoing S&T could be possible).
• Tough Pills to Swallow: Reggie Jackson, Norman Powell, Terance Mann, Robert Covington, and Ivica Zubac. Powell is the team’s third-best player and apparently doesn’t have a ton of trade value due to his 5-year contract (since the Clippers got him for next to nothing a few months ago). Jackson and Zubac are both important starters without replacements on the current roster. Mann is a homegrown prospect, fan favorite, and franchise legend. Covington had a stellar half-season with LAC and just signed an extension… at the exact dollar amount that allows him to be traded this off-season without a waiting period. All of these guys would hurt to lose, but if the right deal came along you’d say a tearful goodbye.
• Expendable: Luke Kennard and Marcus Morris. Both of these guys have given the Clippers good play, but when you look at LAC’s extreme depth they’re the most expendable players who you could see other teams really wanting. Between Powell, Mann, and Coffey, Kennard is expendable as a backup wing, and Morris is the logical odd man out in the PF conversation with Covington and Batum.
• Assets/Sweetener: 2027 1st round swap, 2028 1st round, 2029 1st round swap, 2022 pick #43, 2023-2026 LAC 2nds, 2028-2029 LAC 2nds, Brandon Boston Jr. In addition to the future picks, Boston would be a nice acquisition for a rebuilding team that can invest minutes in his development.
• Filler: Jason Preston, Rodney Hood S&T, Xavier Moon S&T, TPEs. Preston seems unlikely to be traded since the Clippers like him as a prospect but he hasn’t actually performed on the court to garner interest around the league. The Clippers could technically use non-bird rights to S&T Hood or Moon to slightly above-minimum deals to help with salary matching, but it’s unlikely that those slim margins would make or break a deal. Their TPEs can’t be added together or added to player salaries to make trade math work, but they could use them to absorb smaller undesirable contracts from a trade partner to add value to their offer.

I’m not going to get too into the range of options for the Clippers here because it’s so wide-open. Almost any player could fit in a lineup built around Paul George and Kawhi Leonard, and I could see anyone else moving to the bench if the right big name came in at their position. This gives LA’s front office the flexibility to go after the best player they can get on the trade market, almost regardless of position. One thing to keep in mind: targets essentially have to be players already under contract. Acquiring a signed-and-traded player places a hard cap on that team’s cap sheet for the year, and the Clippers are well over that threshold. It’s hard enough to see them cutting enough money to get under it, let alone getting far enough under it to then add a substantial new contract without passing it again.

2) Core Re-Signings

One of the downsides of having such a wide-open hunt for a talent upgrade on the trade market is not knowing what the ripple effects will be on the rest of the roster. However, after extending the contract of Robert Covington, I think that in pretty much any scenario the Clippers will also look to ensure that Nico Batum (player option) and Ivica Zubac (team option) are back on the team next year (unless they pick up Zubac’s option and/or extend his deal as part of the aforementioned big trade).

Batum is only due $3.3M on his player option for 2022-23 after taking a steep pay cut last summer to allow the Clippers to use their taxpayer mid-level exception elsewhere (Justise Winslow). It helps, of course, that he’s made over $160M so far and is still getting paid $9M by the Charlotte Hornets through next season, with that amount partially reduced if he gets a lucrative deal from a new team. It also probably helps that he struggled under the pressure and criticism of meeting the expectations of his massive contract and Charlotte, and that he would probably rather not be in a position to have his contract be a big expiring that the team might want to trade down the line. Either way, I’d expect him to decline his player option–with the Clippers having his early bird rights, they can now give him a contract starting at up to about $12M and running up to 4 years in length. I would guess that a compromise is in order: a multi-year deal in the 8-12M range that gives him financial security after the Charlotte checks stop coming. A reunion seems highly likely.

The Clippers have a team option for Ivica Zubac worth $7.5M next season, which gives them an abundance of options. They can always just pick up that option and worry about his next contract next summer, or they can negotiate an extension, or they can decline his option with a handshake deal for a larger, longer contract in place for when free agency opens. If he ends up being a part of a trade, they would have to pick up his option and flip it, with an extend-and-trade being unlikely due to financial constraints (he can only get a 5% raise, which he shouldn’t accept). Even if the Clippers acquire a big-name center via trade, declining Zubac’s option outright to let him walk in free agency seems unlikely. He would of course be a candidate to be a part of that trade, but if he wasn’t, it would be preferable to keep him as the backup and save the taxpayer mid-level (which is probably going to Isaiah Hartenstein) for another position.

3) Rotation Re-Signings

While I feel pretty sure that Batum will be back with the Clippers next season and Zubac will either be on the team or a part of a major trade package, the same can’t be said for LAC’s two rotation free agents who are a little lower on the priority list: Isaiah Hartenstein and Amir Coffey. Both had phenomenal seasons for the Clippers last year and there’s no reason to believe that a divorce is inevitable, but their departures are certainly possible.

Hartenstein was only with the Clippers for one year on a minimum-salary deal, severely limiting their options to retain him. The good news is that due to their robust depth, there should be no concern about using the taxpayer mid-level exception on a backup center (as long as backup C is still where the need lies, depending on how trades shift the depth chart). That deal would start at $6.4M and could last for up to 3 years with 5% raises for a total of just over $20M. To me, that seems like a perfectly reasonable deal. In fact, you could probably even keep Hart for a shade less and save a few bucks to give the 43rd overall pick a 3-year contract out of that taxpayer MLE. If Hartenstein does leave, whether it be for money, role, or another reason, that contract should be enough to give the Clippers a nice selection of alternative backup centers, a player pool that Robert Flom broke down recently.

Coffey is easier for the Clippers to retain, since he’s a restricted free agent with full bird rights, but perhaps harder to justify since he’s unlikely to be a top-10 rotation player for them next year and the luxury tax bill is mounting. It’s really going to depend what the market is for him around the league, and if teams are going to try to test Ballmer’s willingness to spend extra tax dollars on an 11th man. Sometimes, it works out where lower-caliber restricted free agents just get no interest around the league and re-sign on the cheap (see Montrezl Harrell a few years ago). Sometimes teams overpay to pry away a player they know a team doesn’t want to pay. For example, if the Clips can’t think their depth out via trade and Amir is going to be the 12th man next year, are they really going to match a 10M deal that will cost Ballmer another ~40M in luxury tax penalties? Lastly, sometimes teams try to get a guy while avoiding overpaying by negotiating a sign-and-trade and providing compensation to get around the right of first refusal. It would really be a bummer to lose Amir, but if the Clippers are stuck between letting him walk for nothing, paying $50M for an 11th man, and getting a couple 2nds via S&T, it wouldn’t surprise me to see them choose the latter.

4) The Fringes

Once that’s all settled, there honestly won’t be much to do. Current NBA roster rules state that you get 15 full-time NBA players plus 2 two-way contracts. If you operate under the baseline assumption that the Clippers don’t make a trade and re-sign/retain Batum, Zubac, Hartenstein, and Coffey, then whoever they select with the 43rd overall pick will take the 15th roster spot. They’re expected to keep Jay Scrubb around for a third two-way year, while Xavier Moon is a bigger question mark–one presumes that the now-healthy Jason Preston will get any and all spare PG minutes. The Clippers could look for someone at another position and/or younger than Moon, who is 27.

So, the “run it back” plan means the only changes to the Clippers’ roster this summer would be pick 43 replacing Rodney Hood and maybe a new undrafted free agent/g-league guy replacing Xavier Moon. Working backwards from that, you can figure the rest out: if they make a 2-for-1 trade and everything else goes according to plan, there will be one extra slot for a minimum salary guy; if they make a 2-for-1 trade and keep Batum/Zubac/Hartenstein but lose Coffey, there will be two, etc. But before zeroing in on targets for these depth spots, we need to know where in the depth chart they are after the dust settles from any trades.

The Clippers’ 2022 Off-Season Checklist
Lucas Hann

According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Clippers have agreed to re-sign veteran point guard Reggie Jackson to a one-year deal. Jackson signed with the Clippers mid-season last year after being bought out of his contract with the Detroit Pistons, and was with the team in the Orlando bubble.

Jackson got off to a strong start with the Clippers in the regular season playing alongside Lou Williams on the team’s second unit, but struggled with his decision-making in the bubble and was ultimately unable to stay in the playoff rotation. Originally starting at point guard for the injured Patrick Beverley in the first round against the Dallas Mavericks, he was benched for young shooting guard Landry Shamet and ultimately played himself out of the rotation entirely against the Denver Nuggets when Beverley returned. Offensively he was regularly over-aggressive, forcing bad shots and turnovers instead of deferring to the Clippers’ better players. Defensively, he was energetic but ineffective as former coach Doc Rivers seemingly miscast him as someone who was a defensive asset rather than a defensive liability.

While he shot the ball well from deep with the Clippers–41.3% in 17 regular season games and 53.1% in his 12 playoff appearances–his career average is just 33.7%, so expect some steep regression over a full-season sample size if he is a mainstay in the Clippers’ rotation. Speaking of being a rotation mainstay, don’t put too much stock in Woj’s use of the word “prominent” to describe Jackson’s anticipated role. While Reggie would figure to be a bigger part of the Clippers’ plans if Lou Williams were to be traded, this isn’t a strong enough indication to suggest a move might be coming. Contract leaks routinely come from agents who want to make it sound like they got good deals for their clients. For a veteran point guard like Jackson, who is in his theoretical prime at 30 years old and has been a starter for most of his career, a minimum-salary deal for a third string role has to be less than he was hoping for. Until we actually see Ty Lue overplay him, I’m willing to gamble that “prominent role” is just agent spin.

This one-year deal for Jackson is almost certainly for the veteran’s minimum, as the Clippers have very limited money left available to them under the league’s hard cap. While LAC technically has Reggie Jackson’s non-bird rights to offer him a contract similar to the one they gave Patrick Patterson, they simply do not have the hard cap flexibility to offer it to him unless they were to make a trade that reduced their salary obligations. Instead, this is likely a veteran’s minimum contract that will carry a $1.6M cap hit. Along with the impending addition of Nicolas Batum after he clears waivers, the Clippers now have basically one obvious path to entering the season under the hard cap: cut Joakim Noah, cut Ky Bowman (who was recently signed to a non-guaranteed deal for training camp), and add Jackson and Batum into those two salary slots.

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Clippers Re-Sign Reggie Jackson to One-Year Deal
Lucas Hann

After The Athletic’s John Hollinger reported that Patrick Patterson was signed to a one-year, $3M deal instead of the veteran’s minimum, I figured a quiet afternoon in the NBA was a good opportunity to look at Patrick Patterson’s new contract and explain why he got it and what it means for the Clippers’ plans.

The Veteran’s Minimum

Briefly, let’s talk about the vet’s min and why it’s rather significant that Patterson didn’t get one here. The NBA has a set scale for minimum salaries based on how many years a player has been in the league, increasing from about $900k for rookies to $2.6M for players with 10 or more years of experience. Patterson played his 10th season with the Clippers last year, so his minimum salary for next season would have been $2,564,753. As it is, he signed a deal worth $3M, so why are we fretting about what amounts to less than $500,000?

Well, in order to stop teams from overlooking veterans in order to save money on salaries, when a team signs a player with more than 2 years of experience, the NBA reimburses them for the difference between that player’s minimum and the 2-year minimum (this only applies to one-year minimum deals, not two-year). So, while Patterson would have made $2,564,753 on a minimum deal, the Clippers would have only paid $1,620,564. More important than who writes the check is the issue of cap hit–the smaller number would have counted against LAC’s hard cap, as well as have been the number used for trade math purposes.

Non-Bird Rights

Most NBA fans are familiar with bird rights, the tool that allows teams to exceed the salary cap to re-sign their own players. This helps prevent teams from losing their stars in free agency because they don’t have the cap room to pay them, originating with Larry Bird. However, full bird rights–which allow deals up to the league maximum salary running for up to 5 years with up to 8% raises–only apply to players who have gone 3 years without changing teams as a free agent (so if you are acquired via trade or a waiver claim, your bird rights come with you, and if you re-sign with your prior team, your bird rights persist). For players who have only gone two seasons, there’s the slightly lesser “early bird rights,” which allow teams to give a player the greater of 175% of their prior salary, or the league average salary (currently around $10M). These contracts are limited to 4 years and 5% raises (remember this next summer when Kawhi Leonard is an Early Bird free agent with the Clippers and signs a 1+1 deal instead of a long-term renewal; he’ll angle to hit free agency again in 2022, when LAC will have his bird rights and can give him the longer contract with maximum raises).

Patrick Patterson was released by Oklahoma City during the 2019 off-season, cleared waivers, and signed with the Clippers as a free agent. That was just one season ago, so he’s eligible for the most restrictive version of free agent rights–the “non-bird rights.” These allow a team to pay a player up to 120% of his previous salary or 120% of his minimum salary, whichever is greater. For Patterson, that number comes out to $3,077,704. Based on Hollinger’s tweet, it’s unclear if LAC paid him up to that threshold or the two sides simply struck a deal at an even $3M. Either way, by using non-bird rights and foregoing the league reimbursement LAC structured Patterson’s deal so that he hits the cap for about $1.4M more while only being paid about $500k more.

How Does This Effect The Hard Cap?

Well, my prior calculations assumed that Patterson would be on the vet’s min, and gave the Clippers about $5.2M in room under the hard cap with 3 open roster spots (Joakim Noah and Ky Bowman, who have non-guaranteed deals, aren’t included in those figures). With Patrick Patterson’s contract estimated at 3M instead, the margins tighten. Here’s how it looks:

As you can see, the Clippers are projected to be over the hard cap with 14 players on their roster (technically, Daniel Oturu hasn’t signed his deal yet). Cutting one of Bowman or Noah would get them under, but whoever is cut has to be replaced, as the team is required to carry 14 players on their roster. So, if you cut Bowman, who counts as $1.6M against the hard cap, and replace him with a min deal that counts as $1.6M against the hard cap, you haven’t made any progress. Essentially, Joakim Noah is guaranteed to be released by the Clippers at some point before the season begins.

The maximum room that LAC has under the hard cap would be $3.9M if the cut both Bowman and Noah. They do still have the $3.6M BAE at their disposal, but remember that they have to sign at least two more players. With the minimum cap hit being $1.6M, there really aren’t many options available to LAC besides cutting Noah, choosing between Bowman’s non-guaranteed deal or a replacement min player for the 13th spot, and signing a new min player for the 14th spot. Technically, the team could re-sign Joakim Noah to a new min deal if he clears waivers, but the current depth chart has quite a few big men and no second-string small forward. Given the wait, it seems likely to me that the Clippers are in the front of the line to pursue Charlotte Hornets forward Nicolas Batum, who is likely to get cut this weekend. Other top options remaining on the board are Glenn Robinson III and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, but if the Clippers were going to sign one of those guys it seems like they would have already. That they’re waiting for Batum feels like the most logical explanation.

After reaching that 14-man roster, the Clippers will have about $600k in flexibility to manage their 15th spot during the season. I wrote on Wednesday about some of the creative ways they can utilize that roster spot and cash–like signing a G-League player to a non-guaranteed deal on the day of a game when Kawhi Leonard is load managing and then releasing him after the game, paying him $11k for the day while ensuring you have third-string depth available. Bowman’s non-guaranteed contract can be released at any time through February 27th, and he would only count against the hard cap for the days he spent on the roster. Better yet would be trading Bowman mid-season to remove his entire $1.6M hard cap hit. LAC would then have $2.2M in hard cap wiggle room and two open roster spots, but the rest-of-season deals they’d sign a new free agent to would be pro-rated, costing less than $1.6M.

Does Patrick Patterson’s Contract Help Trades?

Honestly, not really. There’s some idea that having Patterson at the $3M number compared to the $1.6M number could help the Clippers with salary matching in trades. In normal circumstances, that would be true–taxpaying teams like the Clippers can bring in salaries that are within 125% + $100,000 of the salaries they send out. So, for example, Lou Williams’ $8M deal + Patterson at the $1.6M min would be able to bring in up to $12,125,705, while Williams + Patterson at $3M can bring back $13,850,000. Veterans like Thaddeus Young and Patty Mills, who could come up in deadline trade talks, make more than the first number but less than the second.

Here’s the problem, though: the hard cap takes priority over trade math. Just because you can take back Mills’ 13.3M under NBA trade rules doesn’t mean you can exceed the hard cap to do so, and with the Clippers’ aforementioned $600k of wiggle room after signing their last two players, they find themselves far more restricted in terms of trade logistics than they would be under the trade math rules themselves. That can be slightly alleviated mid-season by shedding salary via trade–let’s say the Clippers move Bowman halfway through the season and sign a replacement that makes $810,282 (the minimum pro-rated for exactly half of the season). Now they’ve got $1.4M in wiggle room to make a trade work. Williams, by himself, can bring back $10.1M–adding $2.1M to team salary. Patterson’s contract is still unhelpful.

In that scenario, his inclusion wouldn’t help facilitate a trade, but would take his $3M off of the Clippers’ books. But paying him above the minimum only has value if it helps a trade, not if you need to dump him. For trade math purposes, it would be more advantageous to have him on the minimum and have the extra $1.4M in flexibility.

Additionally, Patterson has an implicit no-trade clause. Players who are signed to one-year deals who will be eligible for Early Bird or Full Bird free agency the next summer have the right to veto any trade that they are included in. That means the Clippers can’t trade him without his permission. His above-minimum contract will be harder for another team to take back in any deal than a minimum salary (which can always be absorbed) would be. Between the hard cap limiting viable scenarios for his salary to be useful trade fodder, his above-minimum deal making it harder for other teams to absorb him, and his implicit no-trade clause, this $3M deal makes Patterson substantially harder to trade and less likely to be traded, not the other way around.

So… Why? Is He Worth It?

In a vacuum, I actually do think Patterson is worth something like $3M. Let’s not forget that he was legitimately useful for the Clippers last year. In 800 regular-season minutes, largely in actual rotation minutes and not just garbage time appearances, he shot 39% from three on 8 attempts per 36 minutes and posted an above-average Win Shares/48, a positive Box Plus-Minus, and a positive VORP. When the Clippers’ signing of Patterson was reported last weekend and expected to be a minimum deal, I wrote that “if a minimum-salary player gives you 800 solid regular-season minutes with an above-average Win Shares/48, a positive Box +/-, and a positive VORP, you got more than your money’s worth.” He was better last season than a minimum-salary player.

It’s also likely, given the timeline of free agency, that this represented a little bit of a conservative play for the Clippers’ front office. By the time on Friday evening that the Patterson deal was announced, it would have already become clear to folks inside LAC’s front office that they would not be able to afford to re-sign JaMychal Green and Marcus Morris while also keeping the MLE open for Serge Ibaka. Having decided to not pursue backup center Montrezl Harrell and having resigned themselves to losing Green in order to pursue Ibaka, but with no commitment yet from Ibaka that he would join the team, the Clippers secured a commitment from Patterson to ensure they’d have some veteran continuity and shooting in their backup frontcourt. We’ll never know the little details of which teams were offering what, but it’s completely realistic to me that teams would look at Patterson’s 800 minutes last season and be willing to pay slightly above the minimum to get that kind of shooting at their backup power forward spot next year.

On balance, though, it was probably a regrettable choice given the way the next 48 hours played out, with the Clippers landing Ibaka and at once both reducing the need for Patterson as an insurance policy and hard capping themselves, increasing the sting of paying him more than the minimum. The additional $1.4M tied up in his deal is a limiting factor for the Clippers as they attempt to fill out their roster in free agency, and it will continue to limit their options at the trade deadline and during buyout season. While he’s a reliable guy to soak up regular-season minutes, his lack of defensive mobility makes him unlikely to feature regularly in the playoffs or make a significant positive impact when he does (he played just 10 total garbage time minutes across two appearances during the Clippers 2020 playoff run). Adequate alternatives existed at the minimum, like Solomon Hill (took a minimum deal in Atlanta), Frank Kaminsky (who took a non-guaranteed minimum deal in Sacramento), Anthony Tolliver (who remains unsigned), and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson (who remains unsigned and is better than Patterson, just not a shooter).

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Patrick Patterson’s New Contract, Explained
Lucas Hann

Lost in recent discussions of a looming trade or the best available free agents is a third path: the Clippers can prioritize flexibility this week, leaving themselves with avenues to access room under the hard cap to add salary in a deal at the trade deadline or sign rest-of-season contracts. There’s no guarantee that desired upgrades will become available mid-season, but if the Clippers are uninspired by their remaining options in free agency it would make sense to wait and keep money open for potential later moves.

The Hard Cap

The decision to use the non-taxpayer mid-level exception on Serge Ibaka effectively hard caps the Clippers, meaning that at no point can their team salary for next season exceed $138,928,900. For now, while Ibaka remains technically unsigned, the team is able to go over that threshold if necessary–but they’d have to get back under it in order to sign him, and stay under it from that point on.

If my projections–which include a rookie minimum deal for Daniel Oturu, a veteran’s minimum deal for Patrick Patterson, the release of Joakim Noah’s non-guaranteed deal, the full MLE for Ibaka, and a 4-year deal for Marcus Morris that would pay him exactly the reported $64M with maximum annual raises–are correct, then the Clippers have about $5.2M of effective wiggle room underneath the hard cap for 12 players. If you consider Ky Bowman likely to make the roster, they have just under $3.8M–though they can cut him at any time, even after the season begins.

Some notes on the hard cap:

• Roster Size: The team is required to roster 14 players during the regular season, excluding two-way contracts. They can temporarily drop below 14, but there is a two-week limit before they must add another player to get back to the 14-player threshold, and they must remain at that threshold for two weeks before being allowed to potentially drop below it again.

• Trades: When a mid-season trade is agreed to, the entire salary of the incoming player is added to your cap sheet and the entire salary of the outgoing player is removed. For example, trading Lou Williams’ $8M deal for George Hill’s $9.6M deal would add $1.6M to the Clippers’ books whether the deal is executed now or at the trade deadline–they would not receive hard cap savings because they only have the higher salary for half of the season. The flip side is that the team can shed money this way–last year, they kept Derrick Walton Jr. on the roster for over half of the season, and then paid the Atlanta Hawks to eat his contract for nothing via mid-season trade. The entire cap hit was removed from the Clippers’ books.

• Minimum Contracts: The two-year veteran’s minimum is $1,620,564. All players with two or more years of experience signed to one-year minimum contracts (more on this in the next section) are paid this amount by the team. Additionally, rookies or players with one year of experience have this number as their cap hit, even though their actual salary is lower. This is to prevent teams from passing over veterans for the hard cap savings presented by the lower rookie minimum. The exception is for players signed as draft picks–which is why Oturu (33rd in 2020) and Mann (48th in 2019) have hits lower than the vet’s min. If the Clippers were to sign Amir Coffey–or indeed, Ky Bowman–to a minimum-salary deal, they would carry the $1.62M hard cap hit as a free agent.

• Exceptions: The Clippers’ TPEs and BAE do not count as cap holds against the hard cap, meaning that LAC can hold on to them for later use.

• The Math: Based on those details, it seems pretty straightforward: with their $3.8M under the hard cap after cutting Noah, the Clippers can sign two more players to minimum deals. Due to Bowman’s contract being non-guaranteed, they could bring in additional non-guaranteed deals to training camp to compete for the final roster spot(s).

• Summer Contracts and Exhibit 9: “But Lucas, if the Clippers sign multiple non-guaranteed contracts won’t that take them over the hard cap?” Not exactly. Players who are signed to “summer contracts” that have no salary protection do not count against the hard cap until they actually make the opening night roster and begin being paid. Technically, LAC could sign 5 players to summer contracts on non-guaranteed minimum deals–pushing team salary well above the hard cap–and as long as they released enough of them before opening night to bring team salary below the hard cap, they’d be in the clear.
  
  Typically, however, there is some risk associated with this strategy. When a player gets injured in training camp, and the team cuts him, they’re on the hook for his full-season salary. The last thing the Clippers need is to have a random undrafted free agent who came to training camp cost them $1.6M against the hard cap because he pulled a hamstring in practice. Teams use Exhibit 9 in player contracts to relieve this salary obligation. However, Exhibit 9 is only applicable to one-year minimum salaries. Typically, you would apply it to deals for undrafted free agents like Jordan Ford and Malik Pitts, but a “priority” non-guaranteed guy like Ky Bowman is likely to have a second non-guaranteed season on his contract to extend the team’s ability to keep him around on a cheap deal if he has a breakout year, making him ineligible for Exhibit 9.

The Veteran’s Minimum

As discussed above, the veteran’s minimum means that all free agents (not draft picks) signed to one-year minimum deals have a cap hit of $1.62M. In terms of actual salary, players make more or less based on their years of experience (a full table is available on Larry Coon’s website). For example, Patrick Patterson, who has over 10 years of NBA experience, will make $2,564,793 next season, but only count as $1,620,564 against the Clippers’ hard cap (the difference is paid by the league, not the team).

Note that this only applies to one-year deals. The Lakers recently signed Marc Gasol to a minimum deal, but a second guaranteed season was added to his contract. That increased his hard cap hit to the higher $2.6M number, forcing the Lakers to trade a second-round pick in a money-saving deal where they dumped JaVale McGee’s contract. Given the Clippers’ limited hard cap wiggle room, this has to be considered carefully on a player-by-player basis. If Glenn Robinson III, one of the better remaining free agents, demanded a second-year player option if he were to accept a minimum deal, his cap hit would be $2,028,594 instead of $1,620,564 due to his 6 years of NBA experience. That extra $400k is certainly affordable within the Clippers’ wiggle room if they choose to sign Robinson, but it’s an important factor.

This creates an advantage for signing younger players–potentially extending team control. Take, for example, new Clipper Ky Bowman. Because Bowman only has one year of NBA experience, there’s no difference between his hard cap hit on a one-year minimum deal and a two-year minimum deal. The Clippers can give him the second season without any repercussions–and if they like him enough that he sticks around for both years, he’ll even be eligible for restricted free agency. Derrick Walton Jr., who has two years of NBA experience, would also have the same cap hit on a one-year minimum deal as on a two-year minimum deal. But a slightly more experienced depth point guard, like Shabazz Napier, who has 6 years of NBA experience, adding a second season would cost the team $400k.

Non-Guarantees, 10-Days, Two-Ways, Rest-of-Season Deals, and the Bi-Annual Exception

If the Clippers choose to conserve as much of their $5.2M in wiggle room for mid-season transactions as possible, they can do so through a variety of mechanisms. We’ve already seen them utilize a non-guaranteed deal for Bowman, and if they do indeed choose this avenue I doubt he’ll be the only one. They also have two two-way players, and later in the season can sign 10-day contracts and rest-of-season deals to save money against the hard cap.

• Non-Guaranteed Deals: When a player has a guaranteed contract, cutting them doesn’t really do anything for your cap sheet–it only clears a roster spot (the exception is if the player’s contract is claimed off of waivers by another team). When a player has a non-guaranteed contract, you can cut them and only owe them for the days that they actually played for you. Since the upcoming shortened season is projected to be 146 days long, that means a player on a non-guaranteed $1.62M deal will hit the cap for about $11,100 every day they’re on the team. Let’s say that the Clippers have a shooting guard sprain an ankle in training camp, and they choose to keep a non-guaranteed camp player around for the first two weeks of the season for depth. He’d make $155k for those 14 days, and then the team could cut him without owing him the balance of his contract. As a result, he only eats up a small fraction of a regular minimum deal’s worth of LAC’s hard cap wiggle room.
  
  Players can also be cut, and then signed again, over and over as long as they keep agreeing to new deals. They also have to sit on waivers for 48 hours every time that they’re cut, where they could be claimed by another team if they’re playing well. Let’s say the Clippers carry 14 players on their roster this season. They could potentially sign a G-League wing, like Malik Fitts, to a non-guaranteed deal in their 15th spot when Kawhi Leonard sits out a game for load management. He’d be on the roster for one day for garbage time or injury insurance, and then they could cut him after the game. He’d make his $11k for the day (not a bad deal when a standard G-League contract pays $35k for the entire season), clear waivers 48 hours later, and be available next week when the Clippers need a one-night depth piece again on their next back-to-back.
  
  The downside of these arrangements is that once a player is cut, his cap hit–whether $155k for a two-week stint to start the year, or $11k for a one-night appearance, or any other amount–is stuck on your books. If the Clippers sign, cut, and re-sign Malik Fitts ten times next year, that $110k isn’t going away. But as I mentioned above, trading a player can totally remove their cap hit from your books. Let’s say Fitts (Malik is just an example as a wing who LAC will have in training camp) is on the roster for the first two weeks of the season and counts as $155k against the hard cap. Then, the team cuts him, but two weeks later they have an injury and end up bringing him back. They keep him until the deadline, when they give another team cash to absorb his deal. His second contract with the Clippers, pro-rated to not include the 28 days of the season that passed before he was signed, only has a hit of about $1.3M–and that comes off the books when he’s traded. The $155k from his first stint stays.
  
  In a normal season, all non-guaranteed contracts become guaranteed for the rest of the season on January 10th. This year, due to the adjusted schedule, I believe that the cut date is February 27th. At that point you either have to cut your non-guaranteed deals, trade them to someone else (who can cut or keep them), or allow them to become guaranteed (you can still get off the cap hit later by trading them, as the Clippers did with Walton last year).

• 10-Day Contracts: After February 27th, you can no longer sign non-guaranteed contracts. Instead, the 10-day contract period begins. Players are eligible for 10-days as extended tryouts, still paid the same $11k per day to bring the cap hit for each 10-day to $110k. These contracts can’t be traded, so you’re basically just eating the $110k in hard cap wiggle room if you use one. Each free agent is eligible for two 10-day contracts before they must be signed to a rest-of-season deal to continue playing for your team. Let’s say the Clippers are using a guy like Fitts for a role like depth on load management nights while they bide their time until buyout season. They can sign him to the aforementioned series of one-day contracts mentioned above up until February 27th. They could then bring him in on one or two 10-day contracts to bridge the gap between then and buyout season, which will happen in March after the trade deadline.
  
  They’d have to eat the money for the days Fitts is on the roster–let’s say 10 one-day deals and two 10-day contracts totaling $330k–but would still leave open most of their wiggle room to either add salary in a trade or sign rest-of-season deals.

• Two-Way Contracts: Players on two-way contracts have some special rules for the 2021 season. They’re allowed to spend 50 games on the active roster, up from the typical 45, and they’re paid a flat rate of $449,115 instead of the typical system that pays them based on the number of days they spend with the NBA and G-League teams. Two-way contracts have no cap hit, so Amir Coffey and Jayden Scrubb won’t contribute to the Clippers’ hard cap difficulties.
  
  I’m considering Scrubb, the 55th pick overall who came straight to the NBA from junior college, essentially a redshirt player (that’s fine–let’s give him time to develop with LAC’s new staff). Coffey, however, looked serviceable in depth minutes last season and figures to be a part of LAC’s third string this season. Last year, Amir played in 18 games in his role. Even with an increase this year, the 50-game cap should pose no issue for the Clippers.
  
  There’s one more little rule that could come into play: teams are limited to 80 total active roster appearances by two-way players on nights when they only have 14 NBA contracts on their roster. To explain that as succinctly as possible, if Coffey and Scrubb are both active for the same game, it counts as 2/80 appearances. However, if the Clippers were to sign Fitts to a contract in the 15th roster spot and pay him his $11k for the night, Scrubb and Coffey could both be active and not count towards the 80-appearance cap–even if Fitts is on the inactive list.
  
  Two-way contracts can also be converted to rest-of-season deals, and the team and player can negotiate multiple additional seasons. If the Clippers don’t fill all of their roster spots in buyout season, and Coffey plays well in a depth role on his two-way contract, look for the Clippers to convert him to a full NBA contract late in the season with additional non-guaranteed years on his contract.

• Rest-of-Season Contracts: When a player signs a contract mid-season, their salary is pro-rated for the days remaining in the year. For example, last season Reggie Jackson and Joakim Noah made $734,025 and $434,704 on their rest-of-season deals, respectively.
  
  That means that if the Clippers sign a minimum deal at the start of March–73/146 days through the season–it would only count as $810,286 against the hard cap compared to $1.62M for signing a minimum deal now, before the season begins. That margin buys them a little bit of breathing room if they do end up adding a little salary in a trade or needing to make other cap-negative deals (theoretically, if a deep-bench guy gets a season-ending injury after his contract has been guaranteed and you can’t dump his cap hit because the trade deadline has passed, you’d like to be able to cut him and replace him).
  
  The pro-rating also helps them save money on Coffey, even if they plan on using him for all 72 of their games this season. He could use his 50 allowed two-way appearances in the team’s first 50 games while counting as $0 against the hard cap, and then be converted to a rest-of-season deal to appear in the final 22 games. While we don’t know exactly how much the hard cap would be for that deal because we don’t know how many days LAC’s last 22 games will cover until the schedule comes out, but it would be closer to $500k compared to the $1.6M cap hit of putting him on a full minimum deal from opening night. That’s $1.1M in hard cap savings with no negative impact on Coffey’s availability to help the team and only an opportunity cost of not signing a different player to his two-way slot.

• The Bi-Annual Exception: The Clippers have their bi-annual exception this off-season, worth $3,623,000. But they don’t really have space to use it underneath the hard cap. With Bowman’s non-guaranteed deal, the Clippers are just $924,218 under the hard cap. Once they cut Joakim Noah, that number will be $3,617,209–just under the bi-annual exception. Sure, the Clippers could just sign someone for $6k less, but they would be at the hard cap for 14 players, without room to even sign someone to a 10-day contract unless they eventually moved money in trades. And if the signing doesn’t work out, the BAE would be substantially harder to dump for nothing mid-season than minimum deals.
  
  If the Clippers opt not to use their BAE this week, they can still use it mid-season. Like minimum rest-of-season deals, the value of the BAE pro-rates as the year goes on. So a player signed using the BAE 73/146 days through the season would make $1,811,500 for the second half of the season. That hard cap hit is much more affordable for LAC’s purposes, leaving them flexibility to play with the 15th roster spot or take back a little extra money in a trade.
  
  For a veteran with 10 years of experience on the buyout market, a rest-of-season minimum deal for half of the year would pay him $1,282,377 with a cap hit of $810,286. Offering $1,811,500 could put the Clippers in the driver’s seat to land whoever their preferred target is. For players with less than 10 years of experience, the cap hit of a minimum deal stays the same but the actual salary decreases, making the disparity between min and BAE even larger.
  
  The BAE, like the minimum, can also be used to offer a contract for up to two seasons–but the BAE is worth a lot more in year 2 than the minimum is. The Clippers could add up to $3.8M in salary for 2021-22 to a buyout season addition, potentially making it a team or player option as well.

A Scenario

Okay, let’s put what we’ve learned into action. First, the Clippers cut Joakim Noah. Then, they wait for Charlotte to waive Nicolas Batum (I’m guessing Batum is their priority over free agents Glenn Robinson III and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, based on the fact that they haven’t moved on those guys yet) and sign him to a fully guaranteed veteran’s minimum contract to be their backup small forward. They invite a number of players on summer contracts to training camp, but Ky Bowman wins the 14th roster spot. Spot 15 stays open heading into the season.

On opening night, for 14 players, you have $1,996,645 in room underneath the hard cap. Let’s say that, whether it’s Fitts or a different wing or a player at a different position, the Clippers use a series of short-term minimum deals for players to provide depth support for injuries or load management–20 days in total. Then, when the league switches over from non-guaranteed deals to 10-days on February 27th, they use two 10-day deals to fill the 15th spot while the buyout market materializes. Ky Bowman is kept past February 27th, allowing his contract to become fully guaranteed, but traded with cash before the deadline, removing his $1.6M hard cap hit.

The Clippers would have now spent around $440k on the rotating 15th man, but saved the $1.6M on Bowman’s deal. They enter the deadline/buyout market with 2 open roster spots and $3,177,209 in hard cap wiggle room. By the deadline, the Clippers have assessed their point guard position and decided they want to go after Oklahoma City’s George Hill (clearly, Bowman didn’t perform well enough for the team to feel confident with his abilities in a playoff setting, as they traded him). They can swap Lou Williams and future 2nds for Hill, adding $1,590,602 to their team salary. Williams stays on the team for most of the season, helping them with his regular-season scoring abilities, but Hill comes in at the deadline as a more steady, defensive-minded alternative to Patrick Beverley for the playoffs. Now, they enter buyout season with $1,586,607 in wiggle room and two open roster spots.

Typically, a player has to clear waivers with his original team by March 1st to be playoff-eligible for a new team–this year, that date is April 9th. The aforementioned ten-day contracts can help the Clippers bridge the gap between the trade deadline and April 9th without going more than 2 weeks with fewer than 14 players on the roster. If the Clippers use their BAE on April 9th, they would have that player for 38 regular-season days, resulting in a cap hit of $942,973. The remaining roster spot and $643,634 remaining under the hard cap is the perfect amount for the Clippers to sign a second player on the buyout market to a rest-of-season minimum deal in their 15th spot. If no such target emerges, they can convert Coffey’s contract to a multi-year non-guaranteed minimum in the slot.

Overall, it’s unclear if all the hand-wringing about the hard cap is worth it. Will a player that comes available in March or April be significantly better than the fringe free agents who remain available now? It’s possible, but certainly not guaranteed. Last season, the Clippers’ buyout season prize was Reggie Jackson. I’m unconvinced that he helps you more than Shabazz Napier, who you can get right now for a full-season minimum deal without worrying about the uncertainty of player availability mid-season or onboarding a new player without training camp. But as the Clippers continue to drag their feet on filling out the roster, seemingly waiting for something, it becomes increasingly likely that what they’re really waiting for is the trade deadline.

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Clippers Can Prioritize Flexibility Over Free Agents
Lucas Hann

According to The Athletic’s Shams Charania, the Clippers will sign Ky Bowman to a non-guaranteed contract. The former Golden State Warriors two-way player will have the opportunity to make the Clippers’ roster in training camp, just like Derrick Walton Jr. did last season.

Bowman began last season on a two-way contract for the hard-capped Warriors on what was essentially a one-season hiatus from contention, as Kevin Durant left the team in free agency and Steph Curry and Klay Thompson both missed essentially the whole season with injury. As the team narrowly stayed under the hard cap–walking a similar tight role to LAC this season, but without the burden of expectations to win games–players like Bowman saw plentiful minutes.

Originally signed to a two-way contract before being converted to the 15-man roster in February, Bowman made a total of 45 appearances for the Warriors, averaging 7.4 points, 2.9 assists, 2.1 rebounds, 1.0 steals, and 1.6 turnovers in 22.6 minutes. He shot below-average marks of 41.7% from the field and 30.8% from deep–though it’s only fair to put those numbers in the context of him shouldering an unusual amount of the offensive load for an undrafted free agent playing on a two-way contract. Bowman was a 38.8% three-point shooter in college but made just 31.5% of his open and wide-open threes last season, according to Nylon Calculus. His small contributions came defensively and he was a net-negative offensively.

While Bowman signed a multi-year non-guaranteed minimum contract with the Warriors when he two-way was converted, he was released by the team last week in advance of free agency.

Per NBA minimum-salary rules, any player the Clippers add at this stage will count as $1.62M against the hard cap–even veterans of 10+ years who will make closer to $2.6M in real salary. That decreased cap hit only applies to one-year deals, meaning the Clippers couldn’t put a second year on the contract of a player like Nicolas Batum without a much higher cap hit this season (the Lakers had to dump JaVale McGee’s contract in order to do this for Marc Gasol). However, for younger players (like Bowman, with 1 year of NBA experience) whose real minimum doesn’t represent a raise over the $1.62M hard cap hit, I would expect the team to add a second non-guaranteed season to this deal to act as a team option for them to keep him for cheap next season if they like him. His deal should be worth $1,445,697 this season (it will still carry the $1.62M hard cap hit to prevent the team from prioritizing young players over veterans in cost-saving moves) and $1,701,593 next season. He would then be eligible for restricted free agency.

The move–which comes days after the team’s signing of Serge Ibaka–may be an indication that the team intends to prioritize hard cap flexibility for mid-season roster moves over the remaining pool of minimum-salary free agents.

To hear a short discussion of the Clippers’ decision to waive Justin Patton and sign Bowman to this deal, check out the newest episode of LA Clippers News & Updates.

213Hoops is an independently owned and operated L.A. Clippers blog by Clippers fans, for Clippers fans. If you enjoy our content, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. Subscriptions start at $1 a month and support from readers like you goes a long way towards helping us keep 213Hoops sustainable, growing, and thriving.

Clippers Sign Ky Bowman to Non-Guaranteed Contract
Lucas Hann

After the huge signing of Serge Ibaka, things have been strangely quiet, causing a lot of folks to wonder if the Clippers are working on a trade. There is, of course, no way to really know what LAC’s front office is up to. Tight lips have been the norm for Lawrence Frank’s team in recent years, dating at least as far back as the Blake Griffin trade.

So, it probably wasn’t surprising that the few leaks we heard leading up to free agency, having to do with players like Rajon Rondo, Kris Dunn, and a supposed mutual interest with Montrezl Harrell, turned into nothing. This is pure speculation, but I have a feeling that these leaks came from outside the organization, either from the agents of these players trying to drum up interest or rival executives’ speculation (think “league sources expect the Clippers to pursue…”). Patrick Patterson’s new deal was so clearly an agent leak that the actual tweet reporting the contract credited its negotiator by name. With Morris and Ibaka, we’re left to guess, but it’s telling that the Clippers were never actually linked to Serge by major reporters until just a couple of hours before the signing–right around when Ibaka would have presumably been informing other teams that they were out of the running.

Just because we aren’t getting hourly updates from ESPN about what the Clippers are working on doesn’t mean they aren’t working on anything (as if any NBA front office is just sitting around during free agency). It’s been proven time and again, so it’s probably worth getting used to.

The fun, then, is trying to figure out what they might be up to while we wait for news to trickle out. Based on what we know, I have to admit: it seems really possible that the Clippers are working on a trade. The facts of the team’s situation are that they are hard capped by the Ibaka signing, and have about $5.2M left beneath the hard cap and three open roster spots, two of which must be filled, to play with. The Clippers technically have a few ways to add players for slightly more than the veteran’s minimum–which carries a cap hit of $1.6M–but any such move would likely leave them unable to fill their final roster spot. An additional complication is that the more of their wiggle room they use now, the harder it will be to make any mid-season roster changes.

For example, if the Clippers wanted to use their bi-annual exception–worth $3.6M–on a free agent, they’d only have enough money left for one minimum-salary deal, forcing them to leave their 15th roster spot open without enough money to even sign a 10-day contract during the year. You can always free up some cash during the season if you need to–dumping a one-year minimum deal normally just costs cash, and at most a protected second-round pick, and that trade would take the entire $1.6M off of LAC’s books, leaving them with space under the hard cap to sign two rest-of-season deals. The bigger hassle is that you have to get rid of one of your players to do that, find a trade partner, and both find worthy free agents mid-season and incorporate them into your team on the fly.

Regardless of what the Clippers end up doing at the end of their bench to navigate the hard cap, their next steps seem pretty straightforward: sign 2-3 more players to cheap deals to round out the bench and get ready for training camp, which opens next week. Sure, they needed to prioritize Serge Ibaka, not only because he was the best free agent the team targeted but because his decision impacted their positional needs and available resources. Still, it’s been over 48 hours since Ibaka was signed, and the Clippers haven’t made another move despite sitting on multiple open roster spots and watching a number of the better veteran’s minimum free agents come off the board. Brad Wanamaker, Torrey Craig, and Solomon Hill would have all been really strong depth additions for LAC, but all have signed elsewhere for the minimum.

So, what are the Clippers doing? They obviously need to add at least a couple more players this week–league rules mandate it. If it was going to be as simple as signing two or three vet’s min deals and heading into camp, you’d assume that they wouldn’t have been on the sidelines for the last couple of days as targets went off the board. Now, knowing this front office, it’s possible that deals with a couple of the remaining targets are already agreed to and just haven’t been leaked. It’s also fully possible that they’re waiting for the Gordon Hayward sign-and-trade talks between Boston and Charlotte to find their likely conclusion: with the Hornets waiving veteran wing Nicolas Batum and him finding his way to a contender on a minimum-salary deal. But Batum is just one player; the Clippers need to add at least two. And while the front office might not leak deals to reporters, it’s a lot harder to to keep agents from celebrating or players from announcing their moves on social media–and once a deal’s been agreed to, why would you care?

It almost seems like they have to be working on something else at this point. I don’t know that they are, but it’s the explanation that makes the most sense considering the team’s inactivity in recent days. If it’s a trade, the options are seemingly narrow. Mfiondu Kabengele and Terance Mann have small salaries and low value and wouldn’t make sense as the centerpieces of any deal. The non-guaranteed salaries of Justin Patton and Joakim Noah have very little trade utility due to the Clippers’ hard cap situation–at best, they could be considered redundant to LAC’s collection of small traded player exceptions. Luke Kennard’s $5.3M salary can’t be combined with any other Clipper contracts to bring back a bigger deal in a trade. And let’s assume, at least, that the maximum salary deals for Paul George and Kawhi Leonard aren’t on the table–no matter how much trade machine porn can be produced around a three-team deal featuring George, Ben Simmons, and James Harden.

That leaves Patrick Beverley (13.3M), Lou Williams (8M), and Ivica Zubac (7M). Even then, I’m skeptical. While there’s been a lot of talk about the Clippers pursuing an upgrade over Beverley at starting point guard, last summer’s Paul George trade left them without the assets to do so–as was clearly evidenced by the trade packages received for Chris Paul, Jrue Holiday, and Ricky Rubio this off-season. At this stage, the guards whose names pop up in rumors, like Terry Rozier and Spencer Dinwiddie, are simply not dependable enough to justify losing Beverley for them. Zubac is a 23-year-old starter coming off of a strong playoffs with multiple years of a team-friendly deal ahead of him–his inclusion in deals is possible, as center production can be replaced more easily than other positions, but he’s not going to be thrown into a deal just to make the math work. I think his value to LAC is a lot higher than his value around the league, so I’m unconvinced that his inclusion anywhere makes sense.

That leaves Williams. While he’s been great for the Clippers since arriving in the Chris Paul trade three years ago, and certainly won me over as one of my favorite players, there are a number of concerning questions lingering around his status with the team–he’s 34 years old, his contract is expiring, he’s a poor defender, there’s a long track record of drop-offs in performance in the playoffs, he fills the backup point guard spot without being a “real” lead guard who can fill in for Patrick Beverley at times, and newcomer Luke Kennard lessens the team’s reliance on his creation off the bench. Many, including myself, felt like the draft-night acquisition of Kennard might have been a tipping point in the team’s willingness to move on from Williams via trade.

Due to the Clippers’ hard cap situation, the options for such a deal are limited, as they really can’t add much more than Williams’ $8M back and still fill out their roster. In order to incentivize teams to take Lou (he’s certainly still good and highly useful, but not every team wants a 34-year-old backup guard at this stage in the off-season), the Clippers would have to use some of their new future 2nd round picks (they got 4 in the Kennard trade). Oklahoma City’s George Hill would make for a good backup point guard behind Beverley, and his $9.6M deal would cost the Clippers a little bit of the hard cap but still be workable. If the Memphis Grizzlies want to create a little cap flexibility for next summer and make a short-term upgrade at 3rd guard, Tyus Jones could be available. He’s a really steady backup PG and his $8M deal wouldn’t hurt LAC’s finances. Depending on what happens with the Houston Rockets and James Harden, veteran forward P.J. Tucker would be an amazing addition for LAC at $8M. Short of Tucker, former Clipper Al-Farouq Aminu makes $9.6M in Orlando and the Magic desperately need playmaking guards. He’d make sense as a defensive-minded backup 3/4.

Those deals still don’t fully satisfy the suspicion of what might be going on. Jones and Aminu probably make the Clippers worse–let’s not forget that Lou Williams is still a very good basketball player, and downgrading for the sake of a shake-up isn’t a good idea. Hill is likely a lateral move, but a better fit. Tucker would make a bigger playoff impact with his defense, but it’s unclear where LAC would find a backup point guard in this scenario as the free agent pool has all but dried up. Plus, even if one of those options is what the Clippers are really working on, what are they waiting for? Lou and a pair of 2nds for Hill is a straightforward trade, and Sam Presti can only haggle about whether Detroit’s 2024 or 2025 2nd is more valuable for so long. Plus, the hole at backup small forward remains unaffected if Lou is swapped for a more traditional backup point guard. Even if they got Tucker or Aminu, they’d need another wing on the roster.

I could speculate endlessly, but I’ll stop at one more suggestion: what if the Clippers aren’t focused on what they’re trading Lou Williams for, so much as what they can do with the extra hard cap wiggle room created by his departure. LAC has a number of ways to improve the roster with above-minimum deals, including utilizing the bi-annual exception, absorbing players with their TPEs, and using non-guaranteed contracts for salary matching in trades. Let’s say the Sacramento Kings match the Atlanta Hawks’ offer sheet for Bogdan Bogdanovic, leaving the Hawks with cap room and in search of a scoring guard, but with nobody who fits the bill left on the free agent market. Could the Clippers trade Lou into Atlanta’s cap space, and bring back sharpshooter Kevin Huerter, who has seemingly been left behind in the Hawks’ retooling? Even short of Huerter, Atlanta or a number of others teams might be willing to take on Lou’s deal and even send back some type of sweetener, perhaps a 2nd round pick or two.

The trick then would be lining up a sequence of deals to utilize the additional flexibility well enough that the team got better. What is the most that LAC can do with the $3.6M BAE once the flexibility is opened up to use it? If I’m being honest, I’m not seeing any veteran free agents on the market who feel like more than minimum guys, unless the BAE helps you in a bidding war with other playoff teams for one of the remaining wings, like Batum, Glenn Robinson III, or Rondae Hollis-Jefferson. The BAE could also be used to give a restricted free agent an above-minimum offer sheet to lure a young player, like Nets point guard Chris Chiozza or Wolves point guard Jordan McLaughlin. Both would likely be matched and retained on a minimum offer, but I think both teams would balk at the luxury tax implications of $3.6M. What is the most LAC can do with their TPEs once the flexibility is opened up to use it? Maybe trade a 2nd round pick to Indiana for T.J. McConnell’s $3.5M expiring?

Let’s say you could line up a series of transactions that would effectively cost you Lou Williams, and use the flexibility created to add a pair of players like T.J. McConnell and Glenn Robinson III. Is that enough? Did the Clippers get better in that transaction? I’ll be honest, my money’s on no. But there are so many little variables here that maybe the Clippers’ front office could scour the corners of the league to find the best possible acquisitions using their trade exceptions and future 2nd round picks and come up with a net roster change that improved the team.

For now, we’ll have to live with not knowing what they’re doing.

Are the Clippers Working on a Trade?
Lucas Hann

After a busy opening weekend of free agency, there aren’t many remaining NBA free agents for the Clippers to look at as they round out their roster following the bombshell signing of Serge Ibaka. For a team that desperately needed to upgrade their weakest rotation spot at backup center, Ibaka is not just an average player who is solid enough to not single-handedly tank them in a playoff series–he’s a dream fit for this roster.

While the Clippers’ front office is rightfully happy to have Serge on board, their work isn’t done. As it stands, the team has 12 players penciled in for roster spots next season, and approximately $5,237,773 to spend under the hard cap (we don’t know the exact salaries for Ibaka or Marcus Morris yet, but my projections are well-informed). Here’s what their depth chart looks like:

A few notes on some debatable points in the above depth chart:

• I’m putting Terance Mann as the third string point guard because the team has repeatedly said that they view his NBA position as point guard. As a rookie learning a new position, he didn’t actually see much action there–when he was pressed into depth duties due to injuries, he featured more frequently on the wing. If the Clippers sign another point guard, he’d be more of the third-string shooting guard–and at 6’5″ with good defensive instincts, he’s more than capable at that position.

• Jayden Scrubb and Amir Coffey are “4th stringers” because they’re on two-way contracts. However, Coffey in particular was solid enough in 159 regular season minutes last year to be considered a legitimate contender for third-string minutes this year. He can appear on the active roster (including games where he suits up but does not sub in) for up to 50 games on his two-way contract this year, so he’s functionally a full-time third-stringer. While I have nothing against Scrubb and actually have hopes for his long-term future, he’s a late draft pick out of junior college who likely needs a year or two before he can make a impact in rotation minutes.

• Are Mfiondu Kabengele and Daniel Oturu both centers? Is Fi a 4 and Oturu a 5? Can they both play both positions? The truth is, the argument is futile because right now neither is a capable option at either position. I’ve listed them both at center because I assume the Clippers will sign another player who can play power forward (even if not a legit PF, a 3/4 who can bump over for small ball) and their real minutes opportunities will come in competition for each other as third-string center. Oturu is almost definitely going to be a center in the NBA. Fi played center for most of his garbage time with LAC last year, but in the G-League played alongside Jonathan Motley, who is also more of a center. Fi spaced the floor for Motley’s interior scoring, but also grabbed more rebounds and blocked more shots on the other end. I have no doubt that he’d have been a 4 at a different point in NBA history, but in 2020 that means being able to guard guys who are 6’6″ perimeter scorers with quick handles. I’m betting on his NBA career coming mostly at center.

• Technically, Joakim Noah and Justin Patton are both still on the team’s roster–but as is clearly demonstrated, the last thing the Clippers need right now is two more centers. Both the 35-year-old Noah, who got passed over in favor of small ball when Montrezl Harrell was away from the team during bubble games, and Patton, who was a salary-matching throw-in to the Kennard-Shamet trade, have non-guaranteed contracts and are virtually guaranteed to be cut. Frankly, the Clippers probably don’t even have training camp spots for them considering the pair of development bigs on the roster and the inclusion of priority Agua Caliente guys Jordan Ford and Malik Fitts. There’s hypothetically value to holding on to these non-guaranteed deals for trade salary-matching purposes, but the Clippers’ proximity to the hard cap essentially takes that off the table as well.

It’s pretty clear, looking at that depth chart, where the weaknesses are in the Clippers’ depth. They obviously need a second-string small forward to complete their 10-man rotation. Patrick Patterson is the weakest second-string player; a power forward option who is more a bit quicker and more defensive-minded would be nice. They need a depth wing for injuries and load management (Mann and Coffey are factors here but you’d like another body). The team doesn’t have a real second point guard behind Patrick Beverley–who starts when he inevitably misses time? With two unproven prospects at center, there isn’t a good option to soak up minutes if Zubac or Ibaka miss games or get in foul trouble.

Let me give the short answers to each of these problems. They need to sign a backup small forward. Ideally, that guy can play both forward positions to reduce your reliance on Patterson. You need, at least, another depth wing or a depth point guard–take the best player who is the best fit and let the multi-positioned players already on the roster shift around as needed. At center, either Kabengele or Oturu is going to need to be at least replacement-level. Using another roster spot there would be an indictment of the front office that not only drafted those players, but in each case traded future assets in negative-value deals to acquire the picks they used on them.

The Clippers have a number of ways to acquire guys to fill those holes, and three roster spots with which to attempt to do so (they must add at least 2 players to reach the minimum roster requirement of 14, adding a 15th is optional). They still have their bi-annual exception, capable of giving out a one- or two-year contract worth $3.6M this year and an optional $3.8M next year. The veteran’s minimum can be given to any player, costing the team $1.6M (the players get paid slightly more based on their years of experience, but the cap hit is $1.6M regardless). They can add guys via sign-and-trade, either using their expendable non-guaranteed deals or a trade exception (the team has three, worth $3.6M, 2.1M, and 1.4M). Reggie Jackson can be re-signed to an above-minimum deal up to $2.9M using his free agent rights.

The tricky part, though, is that the Clippers can only spend the aforementioned $5.2M below the hard cap. There’s no crossing that line, at any point, under any circumstances, until free agency opens next off-season. Not only is it a limit on their spending as they fill out the roster this week, but they can’t do any trade deadline move or buyout season addition that takes their total team salary for the year above that line. That means that moves made this week also have account for the doors that they could close later on. The team could sign two players, one with the bi-annual exception and one with the minimum, and have a solid 14-man roster that is essentially at the hard cap, but they wouldn’t even have enough flexibility to sign a guy to a ten-day contract as temporary injury relief down the line. Money can always be saved later via trade–when you trade someone, their entire season salary is removed from team salary, like when the Clippers dumped Derrick Walton Jr.’s $1.5M contract to the Atlanta Hawks at the deadline last year. But such a move will always cost something, at least cash and sometimes a second-round pick, as happened with the Lakers moving JaVale McGee to create hard cap space this weekend.

So, as we consider targets for the Clippers to round out their roster, they might be a little more cautious than simply saying “get the best player available using the most money we can offer.” Minimum deals will be easier to dump in a trade if needed than a bi-annual deal. Non-guaranteed contracts don’t even need to be traded–the team can simply cut a guy mid-season and only owe him for the games he’s played (through February 27th, when all deals become guaranteed for the remainder of the year), freeing up money to sign rest-of-season deals. That means that not only could the Clippers potentially forego using their bi-annual exception to add an above-minimum free agent, but they might be unwilling to offer guaranteed contracts as they round out their roster. That would explain the team’s inactivity since adding Ibaka–with other teams offering guaranteed minimum deal, LAC could be waiting to see who slips through the cracks and is willing to take a non-guaranteed deal.

We’re getting close to “slipped through the cracks” territory. Normally this is the second week of free agency, but free agency is only one week this year and many teams are done handing out guaranteed money–20 of the league’s 30 teams have 14 or more guaranteed contracts on their books already. Yes, more players will get guaranteed contracts, but many of them will be guys who don’t overlap with the pool of available free agents LAC will be looking at–guys like Brandon Ingram and Dario Saric, who are unsigned restricted free agents that will negotiate new deals with their previous teams. Let’s look at the options:

Best Remaining Free Agent Point Guards

• Reggie Jackson is the devil you know on a frighteningly thin group of free agent point guards. Realistically, he’s either the best or one of the best PGs available at this stage. Personally, I take that as a sign that it’s time to consider Terance Mann and Luke Kennard as emergency point guard options and pursue depth on the wings instead.
• Langston Galloway isn’t really a point guard, but he gets listed here by nature of being just 6’1″. A capable and willing defender, he’s unspectacular at this point in his career but won’t kill you on that end. Offensively, he isn’t a creator but has a track record as a solid three-point shooter in high volumes. He’s also been credited as a positive locker room presence in Detroit, and the Clippers can use all of the good locker room guys that they can get. They could do worse at 5th guard, and the Piston’s chaotic off-season included adding guards Killian Hayes (with the 7th overall pick) and Delon Wright (via trade). His familiarity with Kennard is an added bonus–the two had a 0.0 net rating in 415 minutes together, compared to the team’s -3.5 net rating overall.

• Shabazz Napier did better for himself last season than earlier in his career, likely enough to earn another NBA shot that may not have come if he hadn’t stepped his game up. He’s not a good shooter, but he’s willing to put them up, and he did a good job creating good looks for others when pressed into duty due to injuries in Minnesota last year. Next to Lou Williams, the lack of size and defense would be brutal, but he’s shown to be a competent emergency option.
• Speaking of pressed into duty in Minnesota, Jordan McLaughlin probably showed even better than Napier, and he’s just 24 years old. Again, the size makes a fit with Lou less than idea, but for a depth spot that isn’t a primary concern–and Jordan could stay around for a few years after Lou retires, anyway. McLaughlin is a restricted free agent coming off of his two-way deal with the Wolves, but his qualifying offer is another two-way deal, meaning that Minnesota has not committed to putting him on the 15-man roster. In fact, with a glut of guards, they might be forced to let him walk if a team like the Clippers offered him an NBA contract. Offer sheets must run for at least two seasons before any option year, though non- and partial-guaranteed deals are allowed.

• Evan Turner has the size and ball skills to help the Clippers’ depth at multiple positions, though he isn’t a shooter. The team worked him out as a potential buyout candidate last February but he never became a free agent. He isn’t going to be an impact player now or grow into one later, but on a one-year vet’s min he can help things stay on track when there are injuries ahead of him.
• Tyler Johnson is a scoring combo guard who had several good years before injuries derailed his career. He was atrocious in Phoenix last year, but better in the bubble with Brooklyn. If he’s returned to form as he’s gotten healthy, he’s an above-minimum talent–but he doesn’t really solve any of LAC’s needs in terms of a potential fill-in for Patrick Beverley or defensive depth on the wings. Firepower just isn’t something LAC needs more of.

• Chris Chiozza, like McLaughlin, is an undersized point guard who showed some value on a two-way contract last season. He’s similarly restricted with a two-way qualifying offer from the Brooklyn Nets, and it’s similarly unclear whether Brooklyn would commit a spot on the 15-man roster to matching an offer sheet.
• Derrick Walton Jr. has his obvious limitations, but he played well in this exact role for the Clippers last year. It wasn’t enough to earn a permanent spot with the team, but it might be enough to get him a non-guaranteed deal to compete for a roster spot again in training camp this season.
• Jeremy Lin is reportedly eyeing an NBA return after starring in China last season. Starring in China doesn’t really mean a lot in terms of translating into NBA quality, but it’s a sign that Lin was at least healthy enough to play a full slate of games at big minutes. At 32, would he be able to be better than he was at 30 when he wasn’t good enough to stay in the league after falling to the end of Toronto’s bench?

Best Remaining Free Agent Shooting Guards

• Shaquille Harrison was rather inexplicably not given a qualifying offer from the Chicago Bulls, and the 6’7″, 27-year-old guard has made positive impacts in depth roles over the last few years. I don’t watch enough Bulls games to be certain that he’s the choice here but he’d definitely be a prominent name on my list.
• Courtney Lee may have finally reached the end of his career, as the 35-year-old rarely featured for Dallas last season, making just 24 appearances. I don’t think you can expect a lot from him defensively at this age, but as long as his athleticism isn’t totally gone his smarts and three-point shooting will give you serviceable minutes.

• Troy Daniels made 36% of his threes in a fringe rotation role with the Lakers last season before being cut in March to make room for Dion Waiters. He was good enough with the Lakers to get picked up by the Nuggets, so he could get another minimum deal here, but he doesn’t excite me.
• Speaking of former Lakers who don’t excite me, I’ll pass on Dion Waiters and J.R. Smith.
• If Andre Roberson is actually healthy, we know he can make a defensive impact on the wing–and he’ll only turn 29 next month, meaning a full recovery should be possible. But without some kind of assurance of that, it’s hard to invest limited resources.

• Ty Wallace and Sindarius Thornwell are recent former Clippers who would likely both take non-guaranteed deals after each have struggled to find teams since being cut by LAC a year ago. Wallace was claimed off of waivers by Minnesota but cut before the season started, then claimed by the Atlanta Hawks and cut in December after 14 appearances. He looked really promising in a brief run with LAC but has been quite bad since, and there seemed to be some sour grapes with the way the Clippers handled his contract. Thornwell, on the other hand, still seems to be invested in the organization on social media. We only have 35 minutes with New Orleans in the bubble to look at since he left the Clippers, but they were 35 solid minutes and LAC knows firsthand that he is a high-character guy who will always work hard and can provide defensive utility at multiple positions in a depth role.

Best Remaining Free Agent Small Forwards

• Glenn Robinson III might be the best player on this entire list. He was quite good on both ends for the Warriors last season (though they were essentially a G-League team) before fizzing out on a Sixers team where seemingly no individual player could play well last year. He was formerly Paul George’s teammate in Indiana and could back up the star wing again in LA. Robinson is definitely a 2/3, not a 3/4, so he’d fit the bill for depth behind Leonard but wouldn’t do anything to mitigate the team’s reliance on Patterson.
• Solomon Hill is a different story. The strong, defensive-minded veteran can play both forward positions but has particularly thrived at power forward. A career 33.4% shooter from deep, the “3” has never shown up as consistently as the “D”–but he’s unafraid to shoot them and made a career-best 36.8% last season. If he hits 37% from deep again, he’d be a steal at the minimum.

• Nicolas Batum was a favorite of mine earlier in his career–who doesn’t love a do-it-all 6’9″ wing that defends, shoots, and distributes–but he was miscast as a star with a huge contract in Charlotte and has nearly played his way out of the league. Turning 32 in December, he’s probably got one more chance to prove to the league that he isn’t totally washed up and still has the skillset to contribute as a role player who can hit shots, make smart passes, and guard multiple positions. It’s a high-risk, high-reward play, and the Clippers’ hard cap margin for error is small enough that a non-guaranteed deal here might be as much as they’ll commit.
• Kyle Korver and Marco Belinelli warrant mention as still-elite shooters, but their age and all-around declines make them liabilities overall and the Clippers’ second unit already features four good-to-elite shooters.

Best Remaining Free Agent Power Forwards

• Dario Saric and Frank Kaminsky (who might be more of a center if he isn’t sharing a team with Deandre Ayton) are both technically still on the market, though Phoenix should be able to keep both if they want to. Saric, who is far more interesting as a free agent, is restricted, so Phoenix would have to renounce his qualifying offer in order for him to actually be attainable.
• Markieff Morris played well for the Lakers during their title run, and there’s the obvious connection with his brother Marcus starting for the Clippers. However, his bubble performances don’t really match up with his career output. He’ll give you more defensively than Patrick Patterson but he’s a worse shooter, and he can’t play across positions as well as Marcus.

• Rondae Hollis-Jefferson and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist are both defense-first forwards who are nominally power forwards because of their lack of perimeter offensive skills, but in reality are played for specific defensive matchups moreso than a traditional role. MKG was used situationally by the Mavericks against the Clippers in the playoffs, while the far better RHJ actually had a really good season for the Toronto Raptors guarding players across multiple positions. He’d do a good job of covering for Williams and Kennard with cross-matching on the second unit.
• Ersan Ilyasova was waived by the Bucks after making above-minimum contributions as a backup power forward last season. I’d be inclined to have interest if LAC hadn’t retained Patrick Patterson’s services, but as it is he feels redundant.

• Wilson Chandler, DeMarre Carroll, and Anthony Tolliver are very typical vet’s min ring-chasing types, and all of them were good and versatile defenders at their best. Chandler was briefly a Clipper a couple of years ago and Tolliver was seemingly sought after by Doc Rivers every deadline and free agency window for years. At this point, though, these guys are all two years past doing what you’d like for them to do, and it’s probably time to look younger.

Best Remaining Free Agent Centers

• Hassan Whiteside and Alex Len are both going to end up going to places where they can get consistent playing time, which isn’t happening behind Zubac and Ibaka in LA.
• Guys like Kyle O’Quinn, DeWayne Dedmon, and Ian Mahinmi are more reliable emergency depth centers than the Clippers’ prospects, but I just don’t see them using another roster spot on a big man.
• Skal Labissiere, Ante Zizic, and Thon Maker all represent a bit of upside–but again, the Clippers already invested resources in trading for and drafting two young big men.

Lucas’ Top 10 Remaining Free Agents (For LAC)

That is to say, guys who are realistically available and fit a need.

1. Solomon Hill
2. Glenn Robinson III
3. Rondae Hollis-Jefferson
4. Langston Galloway
5. Jordan McLaughlin
6. Shabazz Napier
7. Nicolas Batum
8. Derrick Walton Jr.
9. Shaquille Harrison
10. Evan Turner

213Hoops is an independently owned and operated L.A. Clippers blog by Clippers fans, for Clippers fans. If you enjoy our content, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. Subscriptions start at $1 a month and support from readers like you goes a long way towards helping us keep 213Hoops sustainable, growing, and thriving.

Remaining NBA Free Agents for LAC to Target
Lucas Hann

According to The Athletic’s Shams Charania, the Clippers will sign veteran center Serge Ibaka.

While the terms of the deal have not been leaked yet, I’d assume that this is for the Clippers’ full mid-level exception of $9,258,000. That contract is allowed to run for up to four years, but Ibaka preferred the flexibility of a shorter deal, signing for two years.

The time for analyzing Ibaka’s full impact on the Clippers will come once the dust has settled, but suffice to say this is a huge addition for the team, particularly in light of the departures of Montrezl Harrell and JaMychal Green yesterday. At this point in his career, Ibaka almost exclusively plays center and doesn’t have the same elite mobility and athleticism that made him one of the league’s best shot-blockers earlier in his career, but he’s developed a well-rounded offensive game that saw him score in similar volume and efficiency to Montrezl Harrell last year.

Combining that offensive punch with Ibaka’s championship experience, defensive smarts (while he’s not as athletic as he used to be, his IQ and positioning remain), and locker room leadership represents a huge upgrade for the Clippers–turning a potential disastrous loss of front court depth into a net gain for the team this off-season. I wrote a few weeks ago that Ibaka would be a dream fit for the Clippers because of his experience, leadership, firepower, and floor-spacing at the center position.

With Ibaka now in the fold, the Clippers have 12 players under contract and $5.2M in wiggle room under the hard cap–and using the non-taxpayer MLE on Ibaka officially causes the team to be hard capped this season. Since they’re required to carry at least 14 players, the Clippers are essentially now faced with the option of either utilizing the bi-annual exception ($3.6M) on a 13th player and then signing a veteran’s minimum contract ($1.6M) on a 14th, or signing three veteran’s minimum players to fill the final three roster spots.

Here’s the current depth chart:

With no backup small forward to play minutes behind the load-managing Leonard, and Patrick Patterson as the team’s weakest second-unit player, they’d be smart to pursue defensive-minded forwards that can fill that void while covering for the deficiencies of Williams and Kennard on the second unit. Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, Solomon Hill, and Torrey Craig would all be good options.

Then, the Clippers will add either one or two additional minimum players (depending on whether they obtain a defensive forward using the BAE or minimum), likely providing supporting depth on the wing or as an emergency point guard.

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Clippers Sign Serge Ibaka
Lucas Hann