Our 2022-2023 player season preview series continues with Xavier Moon, an emergency addition from last year who has earned another opportunity with the team.

Basic Information

Height: 6’2”

Weight: 165 pounds

Position: Point Guard

Age: 27

Years in NBA: 1

2021-2022 Key Stats: 5.8 points, 1.4 rebounds, 2.4 assists, and 0.3 blocks in 13.7 minutes per game across 10 games on 49% shooting from the field and 60% from the line.

Contract Status: Exhibit-10 contract ($1.6M non guaranteed).

Expectations

Xavier Moon was a fun surprise last season when he was signed to a series of 10-day contracts and eventually added for the remainder of the series. The Clippers did not, however, extend him a qualifying offer; instead, Xavier will go into training camp on an Exhibit-10 contract and the parties will proceed from there.

Therefore, given that it is not clear if Xavier will be with the team for the season, it is tough to calibrate expectations. But it seems likely that Xavier will be given the opportunity to play in the G-League with the Ontario Clippers. There, he should continue to dominate along with Brandon Boston, Jr. and work on his physicality and strength. If he is able to earn minutes on the main roster, Clippers Nation should expect Xavier to do what he did last year: give the Clippers replacement-level minutes as a ball handler and distributor with the bench unit.

To be clear, the odds that he actually gets minutes are low, regardless of how well he plays in the G-League. With the addition of John Wall, the recovery of Jason Preston, and the general health of the rest of the roster, it is hard to imagine a path for Moon at the moment. Nonetheless, Ty Lue and the rest of the Clippers organization, especially Reggie Jackson, grew fond of Moon, so he will probably get some kind of opportunity to advance his career with the help of the Clippers.

Strengths

Xavier is extremely quick, is an above-average ball handler, and is a great passer. One of the first things that is apparent when he gets on the court is not only his pace but also his acceleration and ability to create space for himself. This athletic ability allows Moon to make up for his lack of size and strength, and get enough separation to pull up for jumpers or blow by defenders.

Moon’s passing is not flashy, but it is very effective. Whether its pick-and-roll or drive-and-kick, Moon consistently found open teammates or passed them open by leading them in the right direction (especially in the G-League).

Finally, Moon is a pretty efficient scorer. Although it was over a very small sample size, 49% from the field and 36% from three are great splits (he shot 60% from the free throw line, which is not ideal, but he only took five total). What’s more, he shot nearly 50% even though almost 60% of his shots were taken from 16 feet or farther. If Moon can maintain these splits—or even just stay in the neighborhood—he will find himself on an NBA roster at some point in the next few years. Smart, pass-first point guards who aren’t total zeros as a scorer will always be an attractive fourteenth or fifteenth member of a roster.

Weaknesses

Xavier is a well rounded player, but he has a few obvious factors that are working against a long-term future in the league. It seems unfair to call them “weaknesses” because they are not things that Xavier can really control: he’s beyond “development” years and he’s very slight.

Specifically, Moon is already 27 and he’ll be 28 halfway through the season. Now, I do not think he’s “too old” to be in the league, but he is in the position at which he cannot be considered a “prospect” anymore. He’s either an NBA player or he’s not, and no team will invest in him long term purely on the idea that he might get better.

Moreover, he’s really skinny. At 6’2″, he’s only 165 pounds, which makes him liable to get bumped and bodied on defense. It also limits his ability to contribute as a rebounder—something the Clippers need to focus on—and play against opposing starters in general. While Xavier could do the whole “he got bulked up this offseason” glow up that happens every year (even though it’s usually just a narrative), I don’t know what that would do for him. Again, he’s already 27, so making a dramatic change to his playing style at this point might not help and could even hurt.

Summary

On the whole, Xavier Moon is a fun player who will likely be with the Ontario Clippers this year. If the Clippers do, however, find themselves needing his services on the main roster, Clippers Nation can expect solid ball handling and passing as well as athletic moves to create the occasional shot for himself but, above all, Xavier Moon will play within himself and be in control: fast but not in a hurry.

Clippers 2022-2023 Season Preview: Xavier Moon
Kenneth Armstrong

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With the NBA overrun by COVID cases in recent weeks, the league has implemented some temporary “hardship” rules. These rules are designed to allow players to sign short-term replacements for players while they are in the league’s health and safety protocols–in fact, they don’t just allow teams to sign extra guys to 10-day contracts, they require additional signings so that teams can keep full rosters with the league determined to avoid postponed games as much as possible.

The Clippers currently have 4 players in the protocols–Jay Scrubb, Brandon Boston Jr., Ivica Zubac, and Luke Kennard, with Kennard just entering on Saturday before the Brooklyn game–and 3 replacement players signed to those spots in Xavier Moon, James Ennis III, and Wenyen Gabriel. They won’t be required to sign another player to replace Kennard, though they have the option to. If another player were to enter the protocols in the next couple of days, they would be required to sign an additional 10-day guy.

My guess is that, unless they have another positive test in the next few days, the Clippers will hold on to the hardship allowance created by Kennard’s positive test so they can give Xavier Moon another 10-day contract when his current deal expires on Tuesday. Unlike standard 10-day deals, which limit a player to 2 short-term contracts with a team each season, players can sign unlimited hardship 10-day contracts with the same team, meaning that Moon could potentially intermittently be with the team on hardship deals throughout the season whenever the protocols leave them in need of guard help. The same applies, of course, to Ennis (whose current deal expires 1/7) and Gabriel (1/9), who joined the team as veteran free agents, as well as Wood’s Agua Caliente teammates, such as Moses Wright (who was on a 10-day with the Clippers before entering the H&S protocols himself) and Harry Giles (who was in camp with the Clippers and would have joined on a 10-day already had he not picked up an injury in the G-League).

The real question that Clippers fans may have, though, is if any of the current temporary players on the roster have a chance of hanging around as a permanent player rather than serving as as-needed COVID replacements. While each of the three guys currently on 10-day deals have had nice moments in their brief time with the team, the Clippers came into the season with a full 17-man roster, meaning that being vaguely impressive isn’t good enough–they have to clearly outplay a current Clipper for their roster spot to the extent that LAC is comfortable cutting someone to keep a 10-day guy around. Let’s take a look at each guy’s prospects:

James Ennis III

Ennis clearly has the most NBA pedigree of the players LAC has employed on hardship deals this season, and frankly it’s surprising that he’s even in this situation instead of full-time on a team’s roster. At 31 years old with nearly 8,000 NBA minutes under his belt, Ennis has proven himself to be a capable 6’6″ 3-and-D wing who is solid on both ends of the floor. He’s rarely going to be massively impressive, and he won’t get a lot of highlights making spectacular plays with the ball in his hands, but his teams have been better with him on the court than on the bench throughout his career and he hit 43% of his threes in Orlando last season.

Some readers might remember that Ennis was actually higher on my wing target list than current Clipper Justise Winslow in free agency last summer, hammering home the extent to which I’m surprised that he’s scrapping for 10-day deals. I understand the rationale behind the Winslow gamble for the Clippers in a Kawhi-less year–he’s definitely a higher-upside play from a talent and age perspective–but if you were just looking for a solid rotation wing/forward to fill in the gaps on a contending roster, Ennis would play the part better.

But Ennis’ experience actually works against him when it comes to sticking with the team long-term. Here in his 8th NBA season, he’s well past the eligibility threshold for a two-way contract, meaning that the Clippers would have to clear a spot on their 15-man roster in order to keep him long-term. That just doesn’t seem likely given their current roster makeup. With three roster spots taken up by young rookies that the team is holding on to for their upside, the only somewhat vulnerable guys on the team’s roster are Winslow and Serge Ibaka, and neither are getting cut for Ennis. I could see him being an option in buyout season (even though he’s not technically a buyout guy) if LAC finds themselves with an open roster spot following some trade movement, but that’s about it. Otherwise, he’s just a hardship guy for the Clips.

Wenyen Gabriel

While Gabriel isn’t as established in the NBA as Ennis, he’s got some experience under his belt as well. He was traded on a two-way contract from Sacramento to Portland during the 2019-20 season, eventually earning some minutes for the Blazers in the bubble and 2020 playoffs and leveraging some solid play in those opportunities into a contract with the New Orleans Pelicans last year. However, he never broke into New Orleans’ rotation and got most of his few minutes last season in the meaningless closing games.

There’s a lot to like in Gabriel’s game as a 6’9″ forward who is athletic and has an established three-point shot. He’s hit 36.5% of his threes in the NBA and made 39.6% in his sophomore season at Kentucky before going pro (plus, he made one for the Clippers last night). The overall game just hasn’t quite come together. His athleticism pops out when you watch him play, but in more of a chaotic than focused manner, with dunks, steals, and blocks outweighed by turnovers and fouls. Still, there’s clear upside if he can refine his game a bit with more NBA opportunities, despite him already being 24 years old.

One other factor working in Gabriel’s favor is that he is in just his third season in the NBA, meaning he’s still eligible to sign a two-way contract this season. As I mentioned above, it’s pretty extremely unlikely that anyone comes in on a hardship deal for the Clippers and turns that into a spot on the 15-man roster, but the 17th roster spot is a little more vulnerable. LAC’s current two-way players are Amir Coffey and Jay Scrubb, and while Coffey is untouchable, Scrubb’s spot could be vulnerable. The team isn’t eager to move on from Scrubb, but the second-year guard has done little to defend his roster spot in his time with the team, so if another player’s performances for the club sufficiently motivated them to clear a spot, his would be it.

The question is if there’s real long-term upside to adding Gabriel to that two-way spot. The team is deep at the power forward position, with Marcus Morris and Nicolas Batum taking up all of the minutes when healthy and Amir Coffey and Justise Winslow established as depth options. Gabriel can play some small-ball center, but it’s not his best position and the team currently has Ivica Zubac, Isaiah Hartenstein, and Ibaka as big men on the roster. He probably only factors into the teams’ plans this season if there’s an emergency–in which case they could get him on a hardship deal. And since he’s in his last year of two-way eligibility, they’d have to find a spot for him on the 15-man roster next season, which again feels unlikely since they’ll hold on to their 3 current rookies and prioritize moving Coffey (whose two-way eligiblity also expires this year) onto the 15-man roster.

Like with Ennis, I can certainly see the Clippers being happy to have Gabriel available for additional 10-day hardship deals if they have a need at his position. And unlike Ennis, the two-way door is open and I do find Gabriel to be a more intriguing talent than Scrubb–but ultimately, I still don’t see the path forward for him really being an impactful player this year or a member of the team in future years.

Xavier Moon

While Moon has probably been the least impressive of the three, he might have the best odds of sticking around just because he’s technically an NBA rookie. That means not only is he eligible to replace Scrubb’s two-way contract this season, but unlike Gabriel he can stay in a two-way role going forward instead of forcing the team to find space for him on the 15-man roster or lose him.

But to take Jay Scrubb’s spot, Moon needs to show that he can offer the Clippers more quality in a depth guard role than Scrubb can, and that just hasn’t materialized yet. At 27 years old, Moon doesn’t really offer any future upside as a breakout star–he’s just depth. That can be a valuable use of a two-way slot, but only if the depth is quality. So far, Moon hasn’t been bad in his NBA minutes but he hasn’t been overly impressive, mostly putting forth inoffensive and unimpactful shifts bringing the ball up for other guys and getting out of the way. He’s going to need to show more individual on-ball creative juice to warrant continued NBA interest, especially as his lack of size has led to him being a bit of a target on defense. We saw more of that against Brooklyn than we had in Moon’s previous appearances–he went 4-11 from the field and hit some self-created pull-up shots–but it didn’t really feel like anything that Jay Scrubb couldn’t do. In fact, taking a bunch of mid-range pull-ups and shooting under 40% feels exactly like what Jay Scrubb can do.

Unless Moon really impresses against Minnesota, I wouldn’t hold it against the Clippers if they chose to look in a different direction with their next 10-day guard signing. They can afford to look for a little more size with Reggie Jackson now back in the lineup to share point guard duties with Eric Bledsoe, and bringing up another Agua Caliente guard like 6’5″ Nate Darling would better replace Luke Kennard in the rotation as well as take another shot in the dark to hunt for a breakout talent to compete with Scrubb. But I also would support the Clippers keeping Moon around for 10 more days in the name of continuity because so many guys have been in and out of the lineup recently and he hasn’t been actively bad in his minutes so far.

Overall, it’s going to be hard for anyone the Clippers bring in on a hardship deal this season to earn a permanent spot on the roster. Anyone who isn’t two-way eligible is basically a non-starter for a permanent deal now, and could only enter the picture later if a roster spot opens up due to a deadline trade. Two-way eligible players have a chance, but they’ll need to either prove they fill a short term need better and/or are a more exciting long term prospect than current vulnerable two-way guard Jay Scrubb. I wouldn’t be opposed to Gabriel or Moon replacing Scrubb–I’m not overly high on Jay as a prospect at this point–but I don’t think either has made a strong enough case for themselves yet for it to be a no-brainer.

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Should the Clippers hold on to their 10-day players?
Lucas Hann