Now this is How You Tamper!
What happened when Jerry West went to the wrong team in Los Angeles — the story of two teams headed in opposite directions.
The effects surrounding the Chris Paul trades will reverberate for many years to come inside Staples Center. For the Lakers, David Stern will always be a persona non-grata as he tampered in the trade process that would have brought them Chris Paul and who knows how many more titles.
For the Clippers, the deal for Chris Paul completely transformed the team and they gave up almost nothing, as Eric Gordon was injured for five seasons in New Orleans, Chris Kaman left after one year, Al-Farouq Aminu didn’t learn how to shoot three pointers for another five years (upon arriving in Portland) and the 2012 1st round pick turned into Austin Rivers.
The team that used to be a dumpster fire…
Hired Jerry West as a special consultant on June 14, 2017. In addition to being one of the greatest guards in NBA history, West has been the Executive of the Year for two different franchises, then worked as a consultant that created the Warriors dynasty. He may be one of the greatest evaluators of talent and roster constructors in the history of the NBA.
Here’s a timeline of how West transformed a good team with aging, overpriced stars and no growth potential into a fiery competitive team with young talent, draft picks and tons of cap space.
2017
June 28, 2017: THE CHRIS PAUL HEIST.
On Tuesday, three days before the free agent signing period would open, Chris Paul informed the Clippers he no longer wanted to play in Los Angeles, and was to Houston on Wednesday. (No tampering here, folks, just look the other way.)
The Clippers received Sam Dekker, Patrick Beverley, Lou Williams, DeAndre Liggins, Darrun Hilliard, Montrezl Harrell, Kyle Wiltjer, a top-three-protected 2018 first-round pick and $661,000. Here’s what the aging, injured and soon-to-be-way-overpaid Paul was turned into:
Beverly, Williams and Harrell are three core players, all playing a little over 26 minutes per game, and combining for 43.2 ppg, 14.2 rpg and 10.7 apg, while costing $19 M per year. Williams and Harrell are the key players that give the Clippers the #2 bench in the NBA (+14.2 point differential), and a big reason why the Clippers reserves lead the NBA with 52.8 points/game this season, on pace for the highest scoring average by a reserve unit in over 30 seasons. LA’s bench set a franchise record with 89 points on 2/11 at Minnesota, the most by any reserve unit since the Kansas City Kings in 1982.
Sam Dekker was turned into a trade exception.
The 2018 draft pick was part of the trade package that brought in Gallinari.
July 6: Acquired Jawun Evans for $3.2 M.
July 6: Traded Jamal Crawford, Diamond Stone, $1.3 M and Houston’s 1st round pick in 2018 for Danilo Gallinari.
In addition, they signed Todosic, Evans and Thornwell.
2018
January 20: THE BLAKE GRIFFIN HEIST.
Traded Blake Griffin and filler to Detroit for Avery Bradley, Tobias Harris, Boban Marjanovic, Detroit’s 2018 1st round draft pick and a 2019 2nd round draft pick.
Bradley and Harris became starters, with Harris having an All-Star level season. Marjanovic was an impact player off the bench in the right situations.
June 21: traded the Detroit’s 1st rounder and two future 2nd round picks to move up one spot and get Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
June 26: traded Austin Rivers to Washington for Marcin Gortat.
July 24: signed Montrezl Harrell(2 years, $12 M).
August 7: traded Sam Dekker to open up a roster space and save $1.5 M.
October 15: trade Wesley Johnson to New Orleans for Alexis Ajinca (waived) to open up a roster space and save ($12 M over two years).
2019
February 6: THE TOBIAS HARRIS HEIST
Traded Harris, Marjanovic and Mike Scott for Wilson Chandler, Landry Shamet, Mike Muscala, plus two 1st round picks and two 2nd round picks. (For context, this is more than the Bucks got for trading Kareem Abdul Jabbar to the Lakers)
February 7: traded Mike Muscala for Ivica Zubac and Michael Beasley (waived).
Summary
Jerry West turned Chris Paul and Blake Griffin into the following assets:
- Lou Williams (borderline All-Star, 6th Man of the Year)
- Montrezl Harrell (6th Man of the Year candidate)
- Patrick Beverly (NBA All-Defensive 1st team)
- Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (10th overall pick)
- Landry Shamet (23rd overall pick)
- Ivica Zubac (21 yrs old, Per 36 averages of 16.9/11.1)
- The expiring contracts of Wilson Chandler, Garret Temple and JaMychal Green
- Philadelphia’s 2020 1st round draft pick
- Miami’s 2021 unprotected 1st round draft pick
- Two second round picks and
- $61.7 million in cap space
What I like about the Clippers is that they fight every minute of every game, and have a combination of youth (Gilgeous-Altexander, and the other young players), junkyard dog attitude (Beverly, Harrell) and elite clutch shooting (Williams) that has allowed them to come back from more double digit deficits than any team besides Golden State. In one recent stretch, the Clippers were down by over 20 points in six straight games, but somehow won three of them. That’s an NBA record.
In less than two years, the Clippers went from a team with no salary cap and three aging stars who couldn’t take them past the second round of the playoffs, to a team with a young core of promising players, some cost controlled high impact veterans, and enough draft picks, salary filler and cap space to make a big trade or sign a couple of big free agents.
And nobody heard a thing about their actions until after the deals were done.
What used to be the gold standard in the NBA now seems to be trying to set their franchise on fire…
With the signing of Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka, Lakers fans hoped that they would end the horrific run of terrible contracts and pitiful rosters that marked the last five years of the Mitch Kupchak-Jimmy Buss reign. They made some good moves, some terrible moves, and some actions that made the Lakers look like the Knicks.
It really doesn’t matter what team you support and which one you hate. There is no alternate reality where the actions I am about to describe even approach the level of tampering involved in the Christ Paul trades. The only difference is in the comical ways in which the Lakers have been shooting themselves in the foot since Jerry West left the team.
2017
June 22: Drafted Lonzo Ball with the 2nd overall pick. As much as I love Lonzo, we won’t know about his grade until he proves he can stay healthy for a season and is able to shoot free throws better than Shaq. He made a lot of progress in his second year, strengthening his body and learning how to finish at the rim, combined with his already elite skills as a defender, passer and rebounder. Grade: Inc.
June 22: Traded D’Angelo Russell and the corpse of Timofey Mozgov and his contract to Brooklyn for Brook Lopez and the 27th pick in the draft (became Kyle Kuzma) Grade: A
Russell had to go for many reasons. He lost the trust of the other players with his social media expose of Nick Young. He liked to party too much and didn’t show the effort in training and on the court to stay with a young team that intended to play defense and run. Even if he found his way on an All-Star team, getting Kyle Kuzma turned out to be a great deal for the Lakers, even without getting rid of the Mozgov contract.
June 22: Traded the 28th pick in the draft to Utah for the 30th and 42nd picks. The Lakers got Josh Hart and Thomas Bryant, while Tony Bradley has played 27 total minutes for the Jazz. Grade: A
July 13: Signed Kentavious Callwell-Pope to a ridiculous $17M one year deal. Grade: C
But that’s the price you pay if you’re the Lakers and you want to have “conversations” with his agent Rich Paul, who happens to be LeBron James’ agent and partner. That’s some mighty fine tampering, and nobody could say a word about it. Grade: A
August 31: The Lakers are fined $500,000 for tamper with Paul George. Here are all the ways where the Lakers “tampered” with Paul George, but really didn’t violate any rules:
- George talking to his old coach (and current Lakers assistant) Brian Shaw after a game between the two teams
- Magic Johnson making stupid jokes on Jimmy Kimmell live about not tampering with George. I’m sorry, winking is not tampering. The Pacers were upset because George said he wanted to play for Los Angeles.
The fine came because of evidence of communication between Rob Pelinka and George’s agent (who also happened to be the agent of then-current Lakers player Julius Randle).
In other words, the Lakers tampered legally with LeBron James by having unrecorded conversations with his agent under the guise of talking about KCP, but tampered illegally because the Lakers left proof of their conversations that were under the guise of talking about Julius Randle. I wonder if George’s agent, Aaron Mintz ratted the Lakers out to the NBA. He also represents D’Angelo Russell, and was extremely anger about the Brooklyn trade and Magic’s insensitive remarks about the young guard’s leadership skills.
Magic, a little tact and diplomacy would be really helpful here, you know? Grade: F
2018
February 8: Traded Jordan Clarkson and Larry Nance to Cleveland for Channing Frye, Isaiah Thomas and a 2018 1st round draft pick. Grade: B
The Lakers needed to do this deal to free up cap space for the summer, but losing Nance was a heavy cost, while Cleveland’s 1st round draft pick was so low, it didn’t have tremendous value.
February 28: Waived Corey Brewer. Originally seen as a player favor, so Brewer could sign on with a playoff team, this move did nothing to help the team, other than hope to generate some good PR for the Lakers among players. What it did, was expose the team to injury risk, and a slump that cost them a shot at getting back to .500 or even making an improbably playoff run when Josh Hart and Brandon Ingram bot got injured within three days of the waiver. Grade: C
June 21: Drafted Moritz Wagner and Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk. It’s too early to see if Wagner can really play, although he has shown flashes of being the same kind of stretch 5 as Brook Lopez but with better mobility. Grade: Inc
June 30: Waived Thomas Bryant. Lakers fans were horrified to let a young athletic stretch 5 on a minimum contract go for nothing. Many people thought he was better than Zubac, but needed another year of experience. Considering how he has the best PER rating of the Wizards’ starters, this is one of those small moves that they completely missed. Grade: F
July 1: Sign LeBron James. The Lakers instantly became a media target and a marquee team again, regardless of how well they play. Grade: A++
July 2: Sign KCP to a 1-year $12 million deal. The LeBron James excise tax rears its ugly head only one day after his signing. KCP’s poor shooting inconsistent effort, and consistently clueless decision making has been one of the biggest disappointments this season, but at the time, I thought it was okay to sign him again, even though the contract was far too high. Grade: C
July 4: The Lakers let Julius Randle leave in free agency. Randle is playing like an All-Star and the Lakers totally miscalculated his value. Grade: F
July 10: Sign Javale McGee, Rajon Rondo, and Lance Stephenson. I wrote about the horrific series of signings and put it to music.
McGee played great for about 20 games, but was never capable of playing 30–35 minutes need for a starting center.
Rondo had maybe five signature games this year, but has been consistently awful in the 4th quarters, or any time he goes past about 20 minutes.
Lance has played above expectations and helped the team win a couple of games, but his inconsistent decision making and ball stopping have killed the team’s flow even when he has hit some three point shots. Grade: D
November 6: Tyson Chandler signs with the Lakers and proceeds to play great until his body breaks down. It was nice while it lasted, but there was no way to expect that he could play 20–25 minutes per game for the entire season. He’s been pretty broken and ineffective since January. Grade: B
December 21: LeBron responds to a reporter’s question by saying it would be “amazing” to play with Anthony Davis. THIS IS NOT TAMPERING.
And it LeBron saying he would like to play with other good players IS tampering, what do you call this, documented by NBA writer Steve Aschburner:
Grade for the NBA: F
2019
February 1–7: The Anthony Davis Trade Fiasco
I’m not going to go into every gruesome detail about the Davis trade talks, because the media has already beaten it into the ground. All I will say is I am grateful the trade didn’t happen.
And second, Magic’s lack of self awareness and control when making public comments or addressing his own players is hurting the players and the franchise, but all the damage is self-inflicted. Two losses can be credited to the horrible way the front office conducted negotiations, even if the Pelicans were the ones leaking all the information. Magic, can you please put a sock in it?
If the Lakers are able to sign a second free agent, retain and develop the young guys and turn into a contender next year, I will consider it a complete accident. The only hope is that he and Pelinka learn something going into their second year in the front office. Magic is a symbol for the NBA, but unlike Jerry “The Logo” West, he doesn’t have the management chops to go along with his charisma. Grade: F
February 7: Trade Svi and a 2nd round pick for Reggie Bullock. The Lakers are desperate for shooters and didn’t have time to wait for Svi to gain enough experience to become a solid shooting guard. It’s a short term improvement, but was only necessary because of the gross errors in roster building at the beginning of July. Grade: B
February 7: Trade Beasley and Zubac for Mike Muscala. Maybe Beasley had to go because of locker room chemistry, but he could have been waived. Giving up Zubac just when he was starting to make an impact as an NBA center is worse than the free agent signings because he’s on a super cheap contract and the Lakers centers are old and ailing. That’s one of the big reasons why the Lakers defense is the 4th worse defense in the league over the last 5 games. Grade: F
February 8: Tampering jokes about the All-Star draft. After LeBron drafted Davis, Giannis asks “isn’t that tampering?” Giannis is like an innocent, Greek version of Magic. It’s so cute whenever he says anything! Giannis’ Grade: A
February 11: Magic volunteers information that Ben Simmons reached out to the Lakers to consult with Magic. Stupid? Yes. Tampering? No. Magic, can you just shut the fuck up? Grade: F
February 11: Elton Brand mistates the origin of the Ben Simmons request to talk to Magic. Brand’s Grade: A (Anything teams can do to fuck the Lakers is fair game).
February 12: NBA investigates and then absolves Magic. They didn’t need to announce and then conclude an investigation into complete bullshit on the same day. It takes a couple of days for the NBA to review a flagrant foul and make a ruling. This was just grist for the rumor mill to maintain interest in basketball, but it’s turning the NBA into wrestling, or something really fake, like soccer. NBA’s Grade: F
Summary
In less than two years, the Lakers went from a league worst defense and 26 wins, to a work in progress with LeBron James and a young core with potential. No matter what how the seasons ends (anywhere from missing the playoffs to making the Western Conference Finals), the Lakers have a lot of work to do in constructing their roster, repairing their relationships with other teams, and regaining the respect of the fans. The lack of self-awareness and humility by the front office gives me serious doubts about their ability to build a great team in any other way than a Hail Mary free agent signing.
In effect, the Lakers have turned into the Yogi Berra of basketball, where if they see a fork in the road, they take it…
And stick it into their eye.
Thanks for reading. Look for more NBA articles throughout the season.
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