It’s a good thing the Los Angeles Clippers ultimately didn’t lose DeAndre Jordan to the Dallas Mavericks.
Because coach and president Doc Rivers would have been pissed.
P-I-S-S-E-D.
Rivers opened up about the entire situation to Yahoo Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski (h/t Bleacher Report), and it was during their little chat that it became clear that Jordan’s departure would have stayed with him:
“Losing him would’ve always gnawed at me,” Rivers told Yahoo Sports. “But it wouldn’t have stopped me. I would’ve said, ‘F— that, we’re going to figure out a way to get this right.’ But it also triggered something else for me. It might have been my front-office wake-up call. I was not a pleasant guy to me, or my staff, after I thought we lost him – and even after we got him back. We had a lot of ‘come-to-Jesus’ meetings.
“I told them, and told myself: ‘We’ve got to get f—— better. I don’t care if we don’t like how this was done, or we thought there was some injustice. We didn’t get him. We’ve got to be f—— better.’“And we rolled up our sleeves, and we got better. Listen, maybe it’s because when we got here, the team was pretty good and we didn’t think we had to get that much better. I don’t know why. At end of the day, even the way D.J. did it, it turned out to be a blessing for our franchise. For me, it made me understand fully, ‘We’ve got to do this f—— right, and build this team. It’s our responsibility.’
“For our team, it probably fast-forwarded something that would’ve had to start to happen next week in training camp. … The communication.”
Well, shit. That’s one hell of an answer. And it’s an answer that’s bigger than just Jordan. Losing him would have no doubt hurt. Though Jordan has become overrated as a defensive anchor, he is still the Clippers’ defensive anchor. The chances of them fielding even an average defense would have been nonexistent without him.
More than that, there would have been no replacing him. The Clippers could not have spent the money they had allocated for him on anyone else. Josh Smith or Cole Aldrich would have probably been their starting center. Sure, they would have carved out max cap space for next summer, allowing them to take a swing at Kevin Durant or Al Horford or some other high-profile names. But free-agency ambitions are not a given. Ask the Los Angeles Lakers. Or the New York Knicks. Or the Brooklyn Nets.
That’s why keeping Jordan was so paramount. The Clippers have a championship-level core intact, and they have to play those odds. There’s no telling where they would have landed in the wild West without him, or when they would have been fully recovered from his departure. Hell, there’s no telling how much longer they’ll be as good as they are now. Blake Griffin and Chris Paul can become free agents in 2017, and the team’s core could breakup then.
For now, the Clippers are bona fide championship threats. And fortunately for Doc Rivers, he gets a mulligan on everything that went wrong the first time around.
It’s on him, Jordan, Griffin, Paul and everyone else in that locker room to make the most of this second chance.
