The L.A. Clippers have a reluctance to work with the Golden State Warriors. We saw it with Paul George prior to free agency, and more recently with Kawhi Leonard at February's mid-season trade deadline.
The Clippers' unwillingness to deal with the Warriors should already be a source of regret, having taken a worse deal from the Toronto Raptors which will now likely go through after the league's investigation into salary cap circumvention.
Clippers wound up with worse deal after rejecting Warriors trade
The Clippers will still get a reasonable return from the Raptors, assuming the framework of the trade remains the same. Two unprotected first-round picks in 2031 and 2033 are a good starting point, along with a 2027 first-round swap, two seconds and the contracts of Brandon Ingram and Gradey Dick.
That doesn't mean they wouldn't have been far better served accepting a deal from Golden State at the mid-season deadline, with Mike Dunleavy Jr. and the front office reportedly close to acquiring Leonard according to Tim Kawakami of The San Francisco Standard.
While there's no definitive knowledge of what the Warriors were offering the Clippers in a trade, we can safely assume based on reporting around the Giannis Antetokounmpo speculation that also occurred before the deadline.
Golden State would have likely matched Leonard's salary with a combination of Draymond Green and Jonathan Kuminga, along with a similar package of two or three first-round picks that Toronto just delivered. As much as the investigation and now subsequent punishment may have dealt a blow to Leonard's reputation, we have to remember he's coming off a career-best year from a scoring standpoint where he averaged 27.9 points and finished seventh in MVP.
Clippers' punishment suggests Warriors trade would have been better
After the league stripped them of five first-round picks earlier this week, the Clippers have effectively become a free agency team where they'll have to maximize that as their primary mechanism for building their roster over the next near decade.
The problem now is that Los Angeles have Ingram under contract for the next two seasons at nearly $82 million. Perhaps they're comfortable with that because the 29-year-old is good enough to try and keep them competitive, but taking Golden State's deal would have allowed them to get off money sooner.
They could have had an experimental phase with Kuminga just as the Atlanta Hawks did, then decide whether or not to pick up his team option. Even if Green had picked up his $27.7 million player option before free agency, that's one less year than what they will be paying Ingram.
As for the draft capital, many would prefer the Warriors' future picks beyond Stephen Curry. The 2031 and 2033 picks from the Raptors are a long time into the future, but Scottie Barnes is still young enough to suggest they could be a playoff team during that time period.
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