The Los Angeles Clippers find reinforcements in the 2017 NBA Draft, and just in time
The Clippers are perhaps as averse to draft picks as they are to the Western Conference Finals. There are exactly two players still on the roster who were drafted by Los Angeles during the Chris Paul-Blake Griffin era: Diamond Stone and Brice Johnson, neither of whom have given the team anything noteworthy to this point in their careers. In matchups against deeper teams in the Western Conference, the lack of depth provided by poor and infrequent drafting has doomed them. It doesn’t help that the veterans earning minutes ahead of them haven’t broken through either.
Luckily for them, with several key decisions facing them this summer, the Clippers finally used the draft as a way to change their course. Without really altering their strategy, they found a way to get help in the 2017 NBA Draft. The team has long favored older college players over foreign talents or freshmen — Jawun Evans and Sindarius Thornwell have a combined six years of NCAA experience, which will work well on a win-now team like the Clippers. Regardless of what happens with Paul and Griffin, the Clippers’ entire core is in a position to compete in 2017. Evans and Thornwell can step into backup roles immediately and help them continue to contend at whatever level their veteran personnel allows.
While the Clippers already use Austin Rivers and Jamal Crawford in the backup point guard spots, it’s not a position that fits either player particularly well. Rivers is a good spot-up shooter who can defend bigger players, giving him an ideal skill set for an off-guard. Crawford struggles to defend most players at this point in his career, and so doesn’t really have a set position. However, he can make shots in any role from any spot on the court. Evans is a distributor and scorer with a great feel on offense, and he will benefit from the insulation provided by a 50-plus-win roster.
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Thornwell’s Gamecocks recently stunned the world with a Cinderella run to the Final Four. Before his sensational postseason run, he was also the SEC Player of the Year for a solid South Carolina team. His range of skills is why he was drafted, despite being an ordinary athlete. Yet he brought up his shooting percentages across the board while developing into a dominant defender. Thornwell was responsible for forcing nearly four turnovers per game for the Gamecocks, and his proven two-way success is the primary reason the Clippers selected him with the 48th pick.
The Clippers’ priority this summer will be to re-sign Paul and Griffin. J.J. Redick, the team’s prolific marksman, will also be a free agent in July. The roster is in flux, needing reinforcements. Finding two role players in the second round of the draft to pair with Wilcox and Johnson should give the two stars some extra optimism as they wonder what the next great Clippers team might look like.
It’s not just the presence of two great players like Griffin and Paul on the roster that makes Evans and Thornwell intriguing. It’s the specific nature of the Clippers’ stars, their aggressive and stoic attitudes, and the desperate, clawing need to win now. The culture of this team, which trickles down from coach Doc Rivers at the top, is passionate and abrasive. It is also focused and confident. The two young men just drafted come from defense-minded college programs and have years of experience under their belts. They should be able to hold their own in this locker room.
All along, that might have been the missing ingredient for the Clippers’ youth. It’s not just a matter of finding young men who have the talent and intelligence to develop into role players. Just as tricky can be finding new players who can handle Griffin’s terrifying, stone-eyed stare or Paul berating them in practice. There is a pressure in Los Angeles that’s strange and different from any other basketball town. No one on this team has the time to wait out mistakes. In conjunction with the move to sign Jerry West away from the Warriors as a basketball operations advisor, these moves make sense. It’s organizational crunch time for the franchise and this summer will decide the future of the team interminably.
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It was the perfect time for the Clippers front office to get guys with upside. With two players in their 20s who have NCAA success under their belts, the team found them. Evans and Thornwell represent the first real attempt by Clippers’ management to develop young role players. There’s a real chance it’s already too late, but making the correct decision in time is better than failing to recognize a mistake at all.
Ed. Note — An earlier version of this article accidentally omitted Diamond Stone and included C.J. Wilcox in the list of Clippers’ draft picks still on the roster.