Paul Pierce said after the Clippers’ playoff exit Friday night that he didn’t want to make an emotional decision about his future and was 50-50 on whether he would return next season, tweets Dan Woike of the Orange County Register. Pierce, 38, is under contract for $3.5MM next year with a partially guaranteed salary the following year, as Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders points out (on Twitter).
Here’s more on the Clippers:
- The idea that the Clippers need to break up Chris Paul, DeAndre Jordan and Blake Griffin is exaggerated and the team instead needs to make wiser decisions on free agents and improve in player development, Amin Elhassan of ESPN.com argues in an Insider piece. There’s no way the Clippers would receive the same value in return if they were deal one of them, Andrew Han adds in the same piece.
- If the Clippers must trade one, however, that player should be Paul because the star point guard will be 31 at the start of next season, Han writes.
- It may be time to shake things up, considering Paul and Griffin have played together for five seasons and have yet to win a title, opines Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times. Bresnahan suggests it may be worthwhile for the Clippers to make a deal with the Knicks and acquire Carmelo Anthony.
Even with CP3, I can’t really imagine Melo waiving his no-trade clause for the Clippers. Just not a big enough marketing team for him (they may be good but Lakers represent LA).
Its hard to say “Break up the Clippers” after this postseason. If they hadn’t lost Paul and Griffin then sure, I can see the reasoning, but this team finally seemed able to put it all together until both of them went down.
The Clips need to keep their Big Three together for one more season, sign a true star #3, sign some better role players, and try to move up from #25 into the Top 10 of the draft.
I agree with that 100% but that’ll be easier said than done