That means the trade is officially completed.
Considering how little the clippers gave up this is a massive win, at the very least he will significantly raise the regular season ceiling. Having a guy who dropped 40 twice against the best defense in basketball and led the league in assists a year ago as a 3rd option Is ridiculous.
The biggest hurdle for me will be managing the starting lineup, I don’t think harden and westbrook should start together, and it’s going to take sacrifice to maximize this. In any case I expect zu to have a monster year with harden feeding him, it will take stress off of kawhi and pg as well.
I want to watch this team for as long as they can go, what’s better than having 4 homegrown superstar/aging superstars who grew up playing together and love the city/team? Clippers fans should be so excited, Steve ballmer is the man.
As a non-clippers fan (but someone who loves PG and Russ and healthy Kawhi) how do y’all feel about getting Harden?
Some thoughts/questions I have:
- What happens to Russ now? It feels like he was becoming the heart and heartbeat of this team, and his hard work and grind it out style on offense and defense had been a great tone-setter. Does he move to the bench now? What’s his role?
- Bones Hyland?? He was playing pretty nice and now he’s the 3rd or 4th string ball handler. What’s his role now?
- Does Harden raise the floor, raise the ceiling, both, or neither? Does he lower the ceiling? His playoff woes are pretty clear to the point that denying he has problems in the playoff now is just plain stupid. How does his obvious playoff dropoff factor in to how good this team can be?
- What’s the future of this team, now that all assets have been sent out? If I’m not wrong, all the stars contracts are up at the end of this year? What happens if this season ends in another disappointing playoff exit?
Cheers to all -