The talks broke down Tuesday morning when the Clippers "refused to budge" on Boston's latest proposal that asked for DeAndre Jordan, straight up for Garnett, and two first-round draft picks as compensation for allowing Rivers out of the final three-years and $21 million of his contract.
He's always trying to swindle the other team. Face it Danny KG is 37 years old if they would have gave up Jordan and Bledsoe Great, but they don't. WHY? Cause he's 37. Take Jordan and one first we have to rebuild. I'm not the biggest Jordan fan but he's 24 years old, one of the best shot blockers in the game, and we have nothing as far as NBA level size. No bigs Sully can rebound. I'll be really mad with Danny if he screwed this up.
Wow...you really have no clue.
In case you didn't realise this, if the Clippers made the trade then Boston would have also bought out Pierce so he could freely joing the Clippers too, probably at a much reduced rate (as he'd already have tgeh $5M paid out by Boston). That means the Clippers were actually getting Doc, KG
and Pierce.
Lets put that in to perspective.
Point 1:
KG and Pierce combined averaged 33 points, 13 rebounds and 6 assists last season. DeAndre Jordan averaged 10 points, 7 rebounds and 1 assist. Jordan and Bledsoe combined averaged 18 points, 10 rebounds and 3 assists. The Clippers don't even have an interest in keeping Bledsoe for their team plans - they only want to keep him as a trade asset for later down the track. That means that the Clippers don't see Jordan and Bledsoe in the teams plans anyway, yet they belive that Jordan and Bledsoe was not a realistic expectation for KG and a guaranteed chance to sign Pierce - really?
Point 2:
DeAndre Jordan is on a terrible contract. For $10M/season he is giving them practically zero scoring output and cannot play end of games because of his 30% free throw shooting makes him a liability. For the above reasons he has very little trade value to us, nor is he talented enough to build around for his talent. Taking him is pretty much doing the Clippers a favour by accepting a $10M bad contract, yet when Danny asked them to absorb one of our $5M contracts in return (Lee or Terry) they deemed that unresonable - really?
Point 3:
Doc Rivers is a championship coach and a top 3 coach in the league right now, top 5 at the very least. Adding him to the Clippers undoubtedly improved the team significantly. Add Doc, KG
and Pierce and the Clippers instantly become a top 3 favorite to contend for a title next season, which means any of their draft picks would become very late ones worth very little. They claimed that giving up two late draft picks (a late first and a late second) is unreasonable for a for the right to sign one of the leagues premier coaches - really?
The Celtics - by giving up Doc, Pierce and KG - showed a willingness to sacrifice their 'now' in order to help brighten their future.
The Clippers basically wanted to improve their 'now' (by adding Doc, Pierce and KG) without giving up any future (Bledsoe, Picks). That is unreasonable and simply greedy.
Now They don't get Doc, they don't get KG, they don't get Pierce. They now sacrifice their hope of winning a title (nobody else they can get will likely give them the boost KG, Pierce and DOc would) and as such risk losing the chance to re-sign Chris PAul.
As for the KG being 37 years old comment yes...KG is 37 years old. This season (as a 37 year old) he also:
1. Made the All-Star team
2. Had one of the highest positive net ratings among active players
3. Was Boston's leading rebounder
4. Was Boston's second leading scorer
Make no mistake, the addition of KG and Doc would have instantly transformed the Clippers in to a top 10 defensive team as well as a skilled jumpshooter that would have helped spread the floor for Griffin. The addition of Pierce would would have added a multi-dimensional scoring threat to help take attention off Chris Paul. With Paul and Griffin there, both Pierce and KG could taken reduced roles with less pressure on them to carry the offensive load, which better suits their abilities at this point in their careers - that means they wouldn't have been pushed constantly to the limit, so they probably would have been more efficient offensively there.
There is a good chance that these moves would have taken the Clippers to the Western Conference Finals at the very least (quite probably the finals) for a run at a title, and all we wanted in return was two fringe-starters with upside and a late first rounder. For the Clippers this was the ultimate bargain, but they were too greedy and wanted everything for nothing.
I absolutely applaud DA for standing strong on this. We are so much better off letting Pierce and KG retire here (and letting $26M come off the books) than we are dumping them in return for another bad contract (Jordan) and a single late draft pick - two pieces that have little value to us either now or in the future.
