The Clippers have Chris Paul, Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan, so they do not have much in the way of financial flexibility. That is the trade off of spending big on your best players.
The result is a difficult offseason ahead for coach and president Doc Rivers as he looks to improve on a roster good enough to solidly make the playoffs but still lagging behind the Western Conference elite. Many of their role players hit free agency, but that group was aging already. The next step, it seems would be to find younger options at good prices — while making tough decisions about free agents including Austin Rivers.
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Let’s take a look at their free agents, salary cap space and assets for this summer before breaking down what needs to be done.
Potential free agents: Jamal Crawford (unrestricted), Jeff Green (unrestricted), Austin Rivers ($3.3 million player option), Wesley Johnson ($1.2m player option), Cole Aldrich ($1.2 million player option), Pablo Prigioni (unrestricted), Luc Mbah a Moute (unrestricted), Branden Dawson (non-guaranteed), Jeff Ayres (unrestricted).
Likely cap space: None
Realistic maximum cap space (using $92 million estimate): None
2016 NBA Draft assets: Own first and Brooklyn’s second (if Clippers finish outside the league’s best five records, they get Brooklyn’s pick via swap)
Doc Rivers’ largest decisions come on players under contract for next season. Both Paul and Griffin are expected to hit free agency (via player options) in 2017, joined by key contributor J.J. Redick. After all the hubbub last summer, Jordan only has one additional year until he can opt out and become a free agent in 2018.
That reality will loom over the Clippers’ entire summer no matter what happens in the playoffs.
Part of the reason Paul, Griffin and Jordan will be such large factors is that the Clippers do not have many other ways to improve this summer. Their combination of commitments to their stars and dead money still on the books from Jordan Farmar, Carlos Delfino and Miroslav Raduljica makes it unlikely that the Clippers could create usable cap space without losing a piece of their core. Limited ways to add new talent also gives their own free agents more leverage. Jamal Crawford and Jeff Green have particularly strong clout because the team has full Bird rights on both, meaning they can sign them to any salary without using cap space or an exception.
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The other player with strong leverage is Rivers’ son. Austin Rivers signed a one year deal with a player option last summer so he can choose between about $3.3 million and a new contract. Like Crawford and Green, the Clippers have full Bird rights on their backup point guard, so they can spend on him without many other options so it could and should end up being a fruitful negotiation for the younger Rivers.
Last summer, both Wesley Johnson and Cole Aldrich signed contracts at their minimum with player options for the second season. In this market, they should decline those options. The problem is the Clippers could not even offer either a starting salary of $1.5 million without using an exception because they are non-Bird free agents. The collective bargaining agreement makes it hard for teams to use one-year contracts to other team’s players as a facilitator for signing them to long-term deals and the Clippers will have to make tough decisions on both Johnson and Aldrich.
Outside of retaining their current players, Los Angeles has a few other tools at their disposal to solidify their bench. They will have a mid-level exception, their own first-round pick, a strong second-rounder and the offer of minimum salaries to players looking for a chance to win.
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The cap jump could open the door to using some of the options available to teams under the luxury tax line, like acquiring a player via sign-and-trade or signing someone with the bi-annual exception. However, using those or the larger non-taxpayer mid-level exception ($5.628 million vs. $3.477 million) would subject the Clippers to a hard cap at $4 million over the luxury tax line that they could not go over for any reason. That means Doc Rivers and owner Steve Ballmer will have to decide if this year — and the players available — is worth going into a tax hole.
The Clippers have one of the best teams in the NBA. They now must decide where it is going next.