How chasing the Warriors sent the Clippers down the Path of Destruction

From Lob City to Kawhi Leonard, the Clippers spent a decade trying to overtake Golden State, legally or illegally. Their latest attempt may have destroyed their franchise’s future.

Last week I was dead set on grading Golden State’s offseason through your eyes. I’ve got my annual player season reviews coming up during the dead basketball month of September, and I wanted to frame them through just how much Dub Nation is expecting of their players next season based on what was witnessed last year. And in true Dub Nation fashion, y’all let your voices be heard.

Currently the poll has 150+ votes. Can you imagine 150 hardcore Warriors fans in the same room writing their grade on a piece of paper and raising them up silently? So far 5% have graded “A” while 7% have said “F”. Fascinating. The highest percentage of votes is for “C” at 39%. My mother would be completely disgusted with me for bringing a C-grade home back in junior high school, but for long suffering fans of the Warriors we’ve had plenty of “F” graded offseasons that still haunt our souls.

We can definitely get into why you’re collectively underwhelmed with how things went. All the big fish like LeBron, Giannis, and Kawhi landed somewhere else, and even the medium fish like Anfernee Simons and Trey Murphy III didn’t land in the Bay. With Stephen Curry in his late-30s and dealing with a wonky knee, it’s easy to see why the fans were expecting, nay, DEMANDING more from the front office. Their last victory of the season against the Los Angeles Clippers was both euphoric and worrisome. Giving the last bit of whatever they had in the tank to barely scrape by a division rival showed just how little their margin for error is.

Wait, hold on folks, I’m getting a live bulletin across my desk. Apparently those Clippers just…HAD THE WORST OFFSEASON OF ALL TIME?! The Clippers just got hit with arguably the most devastating punishment in modern NBA history for circumventing the salary cap to funnel additional money to Kawhi Leonard through off-court deals. Oh and Kawhi has been traded back to the Toronto Raptors.

Let me copy and paste directly from the ESPN report in summary so we can all get up to speed (shout out to Pablo freakin’ Torre for breaking the story!):

• It started with Kawhi’s 2019 free agency: Dennis Robertson (Kawhi’s uncle) allegedly asked the Clippers for ownership, a private plane, a house and guaranteed endorsement money.

• After Kawhi’s 2021 extension, the Clippers allegedly helped arrange endorsement deals with four team sponsors/vendors, which the NBA viewed as salary-cap circumvention.

• The money trail looked ugly: investigators found the Clippers helped structure deals, including Aspiration’s proposed multimillion-dollar package, while companies involved also received millions from the Clippers.

• The $28 million Aspiration deal triggered a 2025 investigation, which uncovered company interviews and internal notes—including Robertson telling Ballmer, “I have to get paid.”

• The NBA called it a pattern of circumvention: $30 million fine, five first-rounders forfeited, owner Steve Ballmer suspended one year, other executives suspended, Robertson banned five years and Kawhi fined $700,000.

Lololol look I get it, the Warriors may be wasting the end of Steph Curry’s career with a hobbled Jimmy Butler, a graybearded Draymond Green, a 3,000 year old Al Horford, and Kristaps Porzingis who battled an illness so mysterious that it may have originated in Dr. Doom’s lab. Okay fine, I see your point.

But at least they didn’t nuke the franchise to get Kawhi Leonard, a man who delivered zero titles and one conference finals appearance in seven damn years.

See you gotta understand why this hits so hard for me. The Warriors and Clippers had spent the majority of my life as Pacific Division bottom dwellers. In the mid-2010s, they got a new attitude like Patti Labelle. Suddenly they began battling each other to see who would take the division from Kobe Bryant’s Lakers stone cold grip.

In 2014, Chris Paul’s Lob City Clippers eliminated the Warriors out of the first round of the playoffs in 7 testy games, getting GSW head coach Pastor Mark Jackson fired. Also, the Clippers owner Donald Sterling damn near started a mutiny on the court during with the most racist moment in basketball history, at least per the made for TV movie starring Laurence Fishburne.

This was the fuel that started Golden State’s title binging. They won three out of the next four titles and took the Western Conference in five straight years. They wouldn’t meet the Clippers again until 2019, where a contentious series led to Kevin Durant going absolutely psycho and eliminating them from the playoffs with a 50-point tour-de-force.

Unfortunately, that playoff run ended in doom as the Raptors led by Kawhi Leonard survived the wounded Warriors and defeated them in six games. Kawhi took NBA Finals MVP and the title of Dub Slayer.

Later that June, Durant announced his departure to Brooklyn. The first week of July I landed in Las Vegas for Summer League with DNHQ legendary writer Dr. Tom, sipping Hennessy, escaping the desert heat by standing in a casino with a bunch of basketball blogboi nerds. At that point, we had already made names for ourselves as the greatest bloggers in the history of the game, documenting the Golden Empire’s reign every single damn night.

When we came to Summer League fresh off the devastating loss of the threepeat opportunity, we were in a surly mood. We knew those other bloggers weren’t eager to make friends with the two guys who had gleefully roasted other franchises and their blogs as the Warriors steamrolled them on the way to multiple championships.

In the aftermath of KD’s departure, we were just trying to figure out where everybody else was moving around the league as the Dubs licked their wounds. By chance, Dr. Tom even got a chance to chat with Durant’s mom at a craps table about the decision. She told him there was just too many people and too much noise getting in the way of the team. As I sipped the Henny, I pondered hearing him relay her answer that felt both true and also hollow juxtaposed to the scale of the dynasty’s dreams.

As we sat shoulder to shoulder, muttering how lucky the league was that KD and Klay’s limbs exploded in the Finals, the sports ticker on the big screen flashed: “KAWHI LEONARD AND PAUL GEORGE JOINING CLIPPERS”. Whoa. At the time it felt like a checkmate move from new Clippers owner, the billionaire Steve Ballmer. Immediately that duo was getting comparisons to Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen as a tandem.

Fast forward to opening night at Chase Center, the christening of the Warriors’ brand new state of the art arena in San Francisco. Despite a fan base still sore from the team’s departure from Oracle Arena in Oakland, Dub Nation was sure to follow wherever Steph and the gang went. And that night, guess who their opponent was? The NEW new look Clippers.

I was in the building that night, watching the Clippers voraciously devour the Warriors, ruining opening night. It was like your neighbors coming over to your brand new housewarming and crashing the party by hurling your framedfamily portrait through the livingroom window. Criminally disrespectful.

It was a sickening feeling. The Clippers lapped up every second of it, Patrick Beverley in particular soaking up Dub Nation’s disappointed unease. Check out this report of his words during and after after the game, when told Steph, “You had the last five years, the next five years are mine”.

In the Clippers’ locker room, Patrick Beverley was having some fun with some of the arena staff workers who help tidy up the facility.

“Y’all a little different without KD, I see,” Beverley playfully jabbed. “Uh-huh, y’all cheated long enough. It’s OK. Y’all had a good run. Back to reality.”

Lol we CHEATED LONG ENOUGH? Back to reality, huh? Bet.

That was seven years ago. The Warriors won another title in 2022. The best the Clippers could do was lose to the Phoenix Suns in the 2021 Western Conference Finals.

Now fast forward to the play-in game back in April where LAC had Golden State on the ropes in the fourth quarter, season on the line. And then Steph and Draymond Green dug deep and remembered Donald Sterling and CP3 in 2014, and Patrick Beverley’s yapping on Opening Night in Chase Center, and Kawhi being anointed the Clippers’ savior. They said ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

What a shocking comeback by the Dubs. It was their last roar of the season.

After this game, Kawhi’s Clippers tenure had also run its course. He was traded back to Toronto, a deal held up by the investigation into the shady dealings the Clippers used to get him in the first place. One joke I’ve seen circulating around social media is the Clippers traded five first round picks originally to acquire Kawhi and Paul George, and then as punishment for their nefarious dealings have forfeited their next five first rounders. That’s 10 total first round picks gone for nothing.

Here’s a graphic from Basketball Forever, taking full account of what the Clippers gave up for Kawhi and PG13.

Clips owner Steve Ballmer is suspended for the year y’all. Now look, say what you want about Warriors owner Joe Lacob getting on Dub Nation’s nerves for (enter whatever reason you want). But at the end of the day he signed the checks on the team that won four championships, he made a top-tier free agent splash with the acquisition of Kevin Durant, and he built a new stadium in a thriving metropolitan city.

Ballmer just wanted some of that glory for the Clippers. There’s a really dark, macabre gangsta rap related story I remember from the early 2010s where a rapper beefing with Chicago drill artist Chief Keef was brutally murdered. Afterwards, Keef cold bloodedly tweeted (I’m paraphrasing) “Hahaha wow he wanted to be just like us”.

Can you blame Steve Ballmer for seeing Kawhi and saying hey if I get that guy on the Clippers alongside Paul George, everything is wide open! We can even get a shiny new stadium too and get out of the Lakers building! Maybe we can actually take over LA!

Or maybe you’ll be banned from your own arena for a year Mr. Ballmer.

They wanted to be just like us and it killed their franchise’s future. To quote a former Clipper: they cheated long enough…back to reality.