In the early 2000s, the Minnesota Timberwolves committed one of the biggest scandals in NBA contract history. The confusion first started when forward Joe Smith, a former first overall pick, signed a small deal with the Timberwolves.
Now, players taking pay cuts is nothing new, and certainly not illegal by any means. However, then General Manager Kevin McHale had promised Smith a larger deal when the Wolves acquired his Bird rights after three seasons of minimum deals. With the typical restrictions
lifted, McHale promised Minnesota would give Smith the deal he so badly wanted and may have even deserved.
The Wolves were docked five first-round picks, Glen Taylor was fined a lot of (and still not enough) money, Joe Smith’s deal was voided, and McHale was banned from team operations for a year.
You know who probably should’ve brushed up on their NBA history?
The Los Angeles Clippers.
Funny enough, if they had done that, they’d realize that they could’ve asked so much more of Kawhi Leonard than they ended up doing if they were going to cheat this badly anyway. Instead of asking Kawhi for a pay cut, they gave him the biggest extension they could, and then gave him even more money (hence the cap circumnavigation).
Instead of asking for anything back, the Clippers gave Leonard everything and more. Unfortunately for them, the more is not allowed. Between no-show endorsement deals and funneled funds to Swiss bank accounts (okay, they may not be Swiss), Kawhi had fewer responsibilities off the court than he did on it.
If we’re still comparing these Clippers to those early 2000s Minnesota squads, Los Angeles rolled out the Joe Smith offer to someone they were already treating like Kevin Garnett. They somehow above-and-beyonded themselves into a crippling punishment.
Despite sacrificing so much more than those Wolves teams, the Clippers will be giving up five first-round picks, the same initial punishment as Minnesota received. While the Wolves had two of those picks returned based purely on how god-awful they were, the Clippers will continue to try to push for playoff contention.
Additionally, owner/team governor Steve Ballmer will pay a 30 million dollar fine and will be suspended from team events for a year. While the Kawhi Leonard trade will still go off without any real hitch, this leaves the Clippers with just two first round picks in the near future, both from the Toronto Raptors, whose young core likely outgrows any costly regression from Leonard.
All of that is fine and good, but there’s a far more important question to be asked for Wolves fans…
Are we finally not the most pitiful team in NBA history?
Your next SB Nation collapse video, and subsequent hatewatch, is here
It’s hard to imagine that Minnesota could finally not be the most snakebitten team in the NBA. Hell, the Washington Wizards haven’t done much since Wes Unseld in the 60s and 70s, with deserved credit given to Elvin Hayes. The New Orleans Pelicans can’t even put together an all-time team without stealing history from the team whose identity they adopted.
For years, deservedly or undeservedly, the Wolves have carried that weight. They’re still last in franchise winning percentage after all. However, maybe we need to recontextualize this. Bad teams waste fans’ time. Awful teams waste talent and the optimism that it brings, while also wasting everyone’s time as well.
In that way, who is better suited for this role than the Clippers? The aforementioned Pelicans have wasted more young talent and draft picks than any other franchise in the 21st century, but have they ever had the expectations to crush optimism? No, they exist in perpetual basketball purgatory, feeling joy only when they know it will end crushingly and soon.
Could it be our very own Wolves, who wasted away for 20 years before they took a high schooler built like a string bean and watched him turn into one of the 20-30 best players of all-time? They built up a contender around him, and then ruined everything by trying to beat the proverbial NBA dealer to sign a player who barely even fit their team.
They wasted prime after prime. Karl-Anthony Towns, Kevin Love, and Andrew Wiggins all came and went without meaningful difference to the sad, cold status quo.
Building a winner in Minnesota was misery and seemed impossible for years. It’s not anymore. That optimism isn’t crushed and it carries a flame that changes everything.
Conversely, what about this is new for the Clippers?
This is a team that has frequently built teams good enough to win a ring that ruins their own chances. The Lob City era, the early 2013 days, or whatever this era was called, and even the last chance run with Kawhi and James Harden.
Each of those rosters had enough talent to finally break the drought that last the entirety of the Clippers’ franchise history.
And yet they didn’t.
Los Angeles is where optimism goes to die. When they’re bad, they’re hopeless (shout out Michael Olowokandi). When they’re good, they’re simply not good enough.
The NBA returned two of the Wolves’ five rescinded draft picks after everyone found themselves feeling pity for the team that had fallen below the dregs of the league.
The Clippers will get no such pity. They did each and every bit of this. They killed the hopes of their fans while cheating the whole time. They’re headed by the richest man in the sport, who has consistently used his checkbook to prove he is right.
The Wolves had their history saved because of empathy. The Clippers deserve none.
And shout out to Kawhi Leonard for wasting Steve Ballmer’s money and escaping to Canada. May he have an autobiography ghostwritten one day.
