The work begins in earnest for DeAndre Jordan well before tip-off, in the hours preceding the torpid display of what can loosely be defined as basketball. The Los Angeles Clippers are in Orlando to face the Magic on this surprisingly cool December night and both teams are ravaged by injuries. What’s left of both rosters is mostly a discordant mess of past-their-prime veterans and inexperienced players, each trying to prove they belong, sacrificing quality of play and replacing it with desperate determination. And then there’s Jordan, nearly 7-feet of contorted limbs, one leg stretched up to a hip that ends at the average eye level, finding the perfect balance while standing on one foot.
There is more uncomfortable writhing, all under the watchful eye of a Clippers staffer, followed by minutes of slow, deliberate footwork. In his 10th NBA season, practicing a basic stepping motion might seem unnecessary but, at 6-foot-11 and 265 lbs., nothing is quite that simple. There’s shooting drills, too, which might seem superfluous for someone who scores most of his points within three feet of the rim — a whopping 84 percent of all field goal attempts — but preparation is key.
Jordan is left standing as the loudest, most looming presence in another disappointing Clippers season. That role once belonged to Chris Paul, now thriving in Houston. It might have been continued by Blake Griffin, but he’s been lost for a chunk of the year to yet another injury. And so Jordan, having spent nearly a decade in Los Angeles reaching his limited peak as an impactful role player, is the team’s ersatz leader whether he wants the job or not. An example must be made and so the work carries on.
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After the game — a sluggish Clippers victory that marks their third-straight win — Jordan undergoes more stretching. He is the last player to shower and the last to leave the locker room into the chilly Orlando air. Reporters wait for him to emerge, to ask about his 16 points and 20 rebounds, but he stays on the trainer’s table for so long that they leave, one by one, trickling off to file their stories under deadline without a quote from LA’s All-Star center.
Jordan’s eyes widen as he sees that one has remained. “Shit, you’re still here?” he asks jokingly before nodding in resigned approval that he’s at long last ready to talk.
With another lost season, with injuries derailing any slim chance at playoff contention, with his $22.6 million dollar salary already assured, is it hard to find the motivation to trudge your way onto the court every night for what many view as a futile exercise?
“Hell, naw!” laughs Jordan as he rubs lotion on to long, callused fingers. “The motivation,” he continues, “is winning.”
Just the kind of answer you might expect from someone who has emerged as the most important player of this long and winding NBA season.
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It might seem hyperbolic to place Jordan’s limited abilities in such high esteem and there are certainly players that can do far more. They change the flow of the season as the moon impacts the tides, a daily occurrence that is often taken for granted because of its constancy. Jordan instead represents the potential to disrupt the standings more than any individual and on a larger scale, while possibly playing a significant part in the final outcome.
There’s a carefree attitude to the Clippers, despite the injuries and dashed hopes. Or perhaps, because of them. The departure of Paul and, to a lesser extent, J.J. Redick, signified the end of an era that was both very successful and not, falling short of the championship that was expected since Rivers took over the team in 2013. A new version of the team wasn’t believed to realistically compete for a title but there was still pressure to show what the revamped roster was capable of. And now, with injuries to Griffin, Patrick Beverley and Danilo Gallinari destroying the likelihood of a winning season, every ugly, unexpected victory feels like an incredible triumph.
Head coach Glenn “Doc” Rivers led the Orlando Magic for four seasons and walks with a breezy familiarity through the halls of the Amway Center. As he shakes hands with old acquaintances and crouches for photos, the idea that he might be relieved by dramatically lowered expectations definitely seems more palpable.
When asked what’s been working this season, Rivers offers a jovial, “I don’t even know!” as a response. The smile vanishes quickly as he lowers his voice to typically gravel-coarse levels before adding: “The one thing with these injuries is that every game is different. You can’t plan on being the team that you’re going to be the next night. You gotta figure it out during the game, play combinations that you thought you’d never play and you try to steal a game.”
Stealing a game is a common theme in Rivers’ responses that night, as if every win is an undeserved one, plucked from an unsuspecting and innocent victim. But it is, in a smaller sense, why Jordan’s impact threatens the stability of teams with much more likely postseason aspirations. The Clippers have 40-plus games to continue embracing the spoiler role, as they did on Dec. 22 in a 10-point win over the Houston Rockets.
On that night, it was Austin Rivers who helped knock off the Rockets with 36 points, in addition to professional gunner Lou Williams and his 32 points. But it was also Jordan who continued his rocksteady levels of production, adding 15 points to his 20 rebounds.
Jordan, to his credit, is the one who keeps the sinking Clippers ship afloat along the sea of mediocrity and intermittent burglary. He’s played in all 33 of LA’s contests, leads the league in rebounding at a career-high 15.2 boards per game and provides the kind of leadership that makes LA’s ramshackle roster unpredictable and therefore very dangerous.
“You know, we’re not going to feel sorry for ourselves, at all,” offers Jordan about this season’s unique struggle. “It’s definitely a challenge, but that’s part of the competition. I don’t think anybody in this league is going to lay down and feel sorry for themselves, no matter what, even with the status and state of our team right now. As one of the leaders on this team, being here the longest, you definitely want to see us be successful and, whenever we’re healthy, we’ll figure everything out.”
That level of understanding betrays an unmistakable maturity to Jordan, as if he’s finally reached his potential under these trying circumstances. At Texas A&M, Jordan’s body grew so quickly that the skills necessary to become a dominant force never evolved commensurately. As Kevin Arnovitz wrote in this 2015 piece on ESPN.com, Jordan was “tagged with a red flag” and “labeled a head case.” He was gangly, unassured and awkward, capable of flashes but ultimately inconsistent. Still, the combination of raw talent and size was a tantalizing one, and many projected him to be a surefire lottery pick. He played just one season for the Aggies, declared for the NBA and then plummeted to the 35th-overall selection in the 2008 NBA Draft.
He toiled as a reserve early in his career, an unrefined project that never seemed to grasp the nuances of his role. As Arnovitz points out, Jordan was frequently included in potential trades as the team’s former front office grew increasingly frustrated with his lack of development. But as the years went by, both his understanding and confidence grew, in no small part due to the addition of Rivers, as well as talented teammates that enabled Jordan to fill a specialized niche and excel at it.
Jordan has played a number of seasons as a limited and somewhat archaic throwback. In a league that thrives on versatility at every position and expanded shooting range that allows for offensive fluidity, Jordan’s area of expertise is a 16-by-15-foot painted box where play often gets stuck in the grime.
“DJ,” says Rivers through a smirk, “just wants to stay in the mud.”
Offensively, Jordan simply doesn’t miss very much, ranking first in the league in field goal percentage for the past five straight years. (If you don’t do much, at least do what you can better than anyone). But the challenge is more prescient, as Rivers notes, on the defensive end, with so many of the league’s bigs shooting from the perimeter.
“I don’t think DJ enjoys guarding anybody like that. No one wants to go out there. But really, the whole league now, they’re dragging guys out, away from the basket and making shots, and it’s a tough thing to guard. It really is. The 1-4 pick-and-roll [between a point guard and traditional power forward] is tough but the 1-5 [with a center] where fives are popping, now it’s just brutal for DJ to guard.”
Jordan sees himself up for the challenge. “I’ve guarded guards in this league before, so being out on the perimeter, it’s pretty much the same, regardless of position. I’ve worked hard, every day, to get better as a defender. But, me, personally, I just want to become better overall for my team and a better leader,” he says before trailing off. “We’ll see where that takes us.”
The “us” in question is an interesting conundrum and the second part of why Jordan represents such a potentially disruptive force this season. While there’s been no indication that the Clippers will resort to throwing away what could be a wasted season — in fact, by playing spoiler they seem to be doing the opposite — there’s an overwhelming sense that Jordan might be the biggest name potentially dealt prior to this season’s trade deadline on Feb. 8. While the Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets and perennially-contending San Antonio Spurs jockey for the top spot in the Western Conference, teams looking to make an additional push for a title could add someone with Jordan’s particular set of skills in the East (and be capable of absorbing his hefty salary). There have been steady rumors linking teams in Cleveland, Milwaukee and Washington among others to Jordan since Griffin’s latest injury, like vultures circling over the Clippers’ wounded roster in anticipation of its eventual demise.
Jordan has remained mostly neutral about the potential trade, although hiring an agent for the first time in two years certainly lent the idea some credence. He also expressed to Bleacher Report’s Eric Pincus that he considered it very “humbling” that other teams believe he adds value before qualifying that by saying he’s still happy remaining with the Clippers.
The idea of Jordan’s happiness is a curious one when it comes to how it shapes the narrative surrounding his career. Those early impressions of him from Texas A&M — developed when Jordan was a mere 19-years-old — have laid a foundation that’s been tough to reconstruct. He spent years as a relative bust, an incomplete player struggling to make any impact despite athleticism that many gauged to be at an elite level. To the casual observer, Jordan’s limited offense marked him as an unskilled pituitary case that had no place on the NBA hardwood. And if he’s known for anything, it’s likely that he’s largely recognized as one of the league’s worst free throw shooters (even as he’s improved to about 55 percent this season). His free agency debacle from 2015 painted him as immature, easily-influenced and incapable of being trusted.
When asked about the public perception of him, Jordan seemed to withdraw and even at his imposing size, appear frail. “I don’t focus on that, on what other people say or think about me,” he responded, the momentary vulnerability passing like a faint shadow. “I just focus on how I’m valued here, on the Clippers, and how my peers around the league value me and look at my game. That’s what makes me feel okay.”
It’s hard to believe Jordan wholeheartedly and even harder to know if he believes this himself. There shouldn’t be any shame in appearing sensitive to the verbal slings and arrows he’s so often faced, even if it’s incongruent with his hulking frame. He is a person who has worked incredibly hard to achieve what so little have, to make a phenomenal living by excelling in certain aspects even while underperforming in others. He waffled between a life-altering decision and chose comfort, and perhaps safety, in remaining with the Clippers. Far more complete players have eschewed the responsibility of being the brightest name on the marquee, and Jordan has unexpectedly shone as a leader this season.
Whatever your opinion of Jordan may be, he certainly takes pride in winning, whether carving out scarce victories or on the world’s biggest stage. His Olympics success as part of the 2016 US Men’s Basketball team remains his greatest and proudest accomplishment, as he explained in Orlando. “Anytime you win something is significant for you as an individual but, for me, that was a team game that was bigger than myself or any of us. It was us representing our country. Not a lot of people get to be olympians, much less win a gold medal.”
After the victory over the Magic, Rivers gushed about Jordan’s performance, saying, “He does the right things to help you win games.” He went on about Jordan’s growth in the pick-and-roll, about his defense and rebounding, and explained that, with so many injuries to LA’s roster, “We just need him…we need him to be great right now.” Rivers also noted Jordan’s development as the team’s principal voice, adding, “The leadership from DJ has just been phenomenal.”
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Jordan’s role might be limited and yet also expanding, a duality that seems fitting for someone so routinely underappreciated. If Jordan is looking to be valued, then he certainly has that from Rivers and the rest of his Clippers teammates. The irony is that it might take a trade to prove that his specialized role can be an essential part of a title-winning team and that even a “head case” from Texas can cast the longest shadow across the NBA landscape.