Real Men Wear Green
10-07-2024, 04:30 PM
-Kawhi Leonard on his Clipper teammates
Steve Ballmer may never say it publicly but the only team owner with more reason to be angry about his big free agent signings is Joe Tsai with the Nets fiasco a few years ago. I weirdly find myself irritated for him. If I was Ballmer I would be like, "I'm in the process of wasting 300 million dollars* on you, could you please at least pretend that you don't think we're a bunch of morons? Please?" Leonard should feel a moral obligation to say nice things about the Clippers because what they have done in the process of trying to build a champion around him had completely destroyed their ability to contend.
To get him to sign the Clippers had to trade Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Danilo Gallinari and 6 first round picks and pick swaps for Paul George. Leonard forced them to do this by threatening to sign with the Lakers and create something disgusting. In one of the greatest ironies of all time they would have better off of he had went to the Lakers and prevented James and Davis from winning than they ended up being over the course of the Kawhi era. They gave up a superstar and 7 potential rotation players for Paul George. You could take those assets and potentially create a team on par with last year's Knicks. That is almost all of the basic components of the Thunder team that had the best record in the West.
They did this trade not because they thought it was a good deal but because they were desperate to contend. I can't totally fault them because with Leonard at the time having just led the Raptors to a title the temptation was strong. He had extreme leverage and he used it.
After that we saw years of playoff runs ruined by injuries. You can't hold that against him, his body is failing him. The problem is that after all this... he then signs a deal where he gets 50 mil per year (and yes the Clips were idiots for giving it to him). Between that deal and the last deal they handed him, couldn't be at least be nice about it?
This just hurts feelings.
Steve Ballmer may never say it publicly but the only team owner with more reason to be angry about his big free agent signings is Joe Tsai with the Nets fiasco a few years ago. I weirdly find myself irritated for him. If I was Ballmer I would be like, "I'm in the process of wasting 300 million dollars* on you, could you please at least pretend that you don't think we're a bunch of morons? Please?" Leonard should feel a moral obligation to say nice things about the Clippers because what they have done in the process of trying to build a champion around him had completely destroyed their ability to contend.
To get him to sign the Clippers had to trade Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Danilo Gallinari and 6 first round picks and pick swaps for Paul George. Leonard forced them to do this by threatening to sign with the Lakers and create something disgusting. In one of the greatest ironies of all time they would have better off of he had went to the Lakers and prevented James and Davis from winning than they ended up being over the course of the Kawhi era. They gave up a superstar and 7 potential rotation players for Paul George. You could take those assets and potentially create a team on par with last year's Knicks. That is almost all of the basic components of the Thunder team that had the best record in the West.
They did this trade not because they thought it was a good deal but because they were desperate to contend. I can't totally fault them because with Leonard at the time having just led the Raptors to a title the temptation was strong. He had extreme leverage and he used it.
After that we saw years of playoff runs ruined by injuries. You can't hold that against him, his body is failing him. The problem is that after all this... he then signs a deal where he gets 50 mil per year (and yes the Clips were idiots for giving it to him). Between that deal and the last deal they handed him, couldn't be at least be nice about it?
This just hurts feelings.