Clippers add another failure to their NBA history: what’s next?

The departures of Harden and George leave Leonard and the Clippers in check, who may now face another reengineering if the former NBA Finals MVP decides to leave.

“I think that’s over now,” he said. Kawhi Leonard in February, when asked about the chances that Los Angeles Clippers compete for the title this season of the NBA. But an alternative interpretation would be that Leonard extrapolated that to talk about the team’s chances in the remainder of his stay with the club.

Before the Golden State Warriors This Wednesday, within the framework of the Play-In, Leonard was not even the player with the greatest impact for Los Angeles in the defeat that eliminated them from the playoffs. Leonard finished with 21 points, seven rebounds and five turnovers in the duel that ended 126-121 in favor of the Northern California team.

In the fourth quarter, the Clippers’ defense fell apart, allowing 43 points as Golden State came back. In the end, the offense depended more on Ben Mathurin and his five three-pointers (he finished with 23 points) and the distribution of Kris Dunn, who had ten assists. Even with the heroic response of Stephen Curry and the Warriors, Los Angeles had everything to win a home duel in which they were leading within the last two minutes.

After the game, Leonard declined to talk about his future, but the implicit message, stated since February, seems to be clear: is the end of the Kawhi era with the Clippers approaching?

New era of Clippers, same results

After the first 14 years of their existence, the Clippers had embarked on a nomadic journey in diametrically different parts of the United States, going from the northeast as the Buffalo Braves, to the southwest as the San Diego Clippers, the name chosen for the historical presence of military and commercial ships in the southern California city.

With real estate magnate Donald Sterling as owner, the team left again, for Los Angeles, where it sought to overshadow the Lakers, the most popular team not only in the metropolis, but in the state itself. Between 1984 and 2010, the team won a single playoff series, creating a reputation as a perennially unsuccessful franchise.

Starting in 2011, the arrival of Blake Griffin, Chris Paul and DeAndre Jordan It meant the team found unprecedented success, which was clouded by public controversy that forced Sterling to sell the team in 2014 to technology entrepreneur Steve Ballmer.

With Ballmer at the helm, the team went from the era of Griffin, Paul and Jordan (called Lob City) to the era of Kawhi Leonard, which has had Paul George and James Harden as main companions. To bring them together, Ballmer and the Clippers gave up Shai-Gilgeous Alexander, current MVP and NBA champion with the Oklahoma City Thunder.

After the milestone of reaching the Western Conference Final in 2021 against the Suns, the Clippers have not won a playoff series again, and they got rid of both George and Harden. The biggest celebration in the last decade? Opening his own stadium, the Intuit Dome, which cost Ballmer two billion dollars, the same amount he paid for the team at the time.

The Intuit was the venue for the NBA All-Star Game and will be one of the important buildings for the 2028 Olympic Games, but what it does not seem to have in its near future is the possibility of watching NBA Finals games.

Clippers, changes in sight?

Leonard will turn 35 this June, and will enter the final year of his current contract, in which he earns an average of $50 million annually. While Kawhi will be a natural candidate for a contract extension, the team may decide to go in another direction, taking into account that it has two young players with the potential to rebuild in the medium term.

Darius Garland was the centerpiece in trading Harden to Cleveland a few months ago, and the 26-year-old point guard looked pretty good in his first half-season with the Clippers, scoring nearly 20 points per game. Mathurin, also acquired in February in exchange for Ivica Zubac, shined coming off the bench for coach Ty Lue.

That youth seems very important for the Clippers, who potentially have only one first-round pick in the Draft until 2029, a product of their different trades in previous years, of which the most damaging was with the Oklahoma City Thunder for George. The Thunder built the foundation of their current championship team on the trade, landing SGA and Jalen Williams, among others, and it continues to pay off.

For example, with the loss to the Warriors, the Clippers’ 2026 first-round pick – given to Oklahoma City in the trade – will give a lottery pick to the Thunder. That is, it could even result in a first overall pick for a team seeking to achieve a two-time NBA championship.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles, with the changes of Harden and Zubac, seems willing to give up veterans in exchange for future promises and selections. That is, on paper, rebuilding the Clippers’ roster – if the team decides to do it in a structured way and with young players at center – will take time and patience, virtues that Ballmer, after seeking to win quickly in his first stage with the Clippers, is learning to develop. Under that premise, having an expensive player who is entering the final stage of his career, like Kawhi, does not seem to make much sense.

Paraphrasing Leonard, it is believed that not only the Clippers’ season ended, but the entire era of the player at the center of a team that, in the end, failed to change the historical narrative of the franchise.