By Jordan Hamel

It's November 27 in L.A, the Clippers are playing the Lakers in Los Angeles fighting for the love of their city. Clippers forward and new face of the franchise Blake Griffin gets knocked over, grabs his knee and screams in pain, the entire Staples Centre goes quiet as the Clippers’ playoff aspirations disappear, dreams of championships disappear, any hopes of immediate success in the post-Chris Paul era disappear.

A week earlier in the southern metropolis of Timaru, Aotearoa, a crowd gathers round a controversial landmark to watch it finally get torn down. The Hydro Grand Hotel, a heritage building long abandoned, once the pinnacle of Timaru nightlife, more recently a place of squatters, fires and extreme dilapidation. It became the symbol of a struggle between letting go and holding on, between the old and the new, and on November 18 2017 as the cranes ripped through it, like an MCL tearing in two, the new won.

Sometimes you have to tear things down to move forward and its time the Clippers took a lesson from Timaru. L.A’s least favourite franchise is in a sad state of affairs, Chris Paul left for greener pastures in the off-season, Doc Rivers the GM/Coach who was supposed to lead them to the promised land is failing and they’re now playing without four of their five opening night starters (DeAndre Jordan being the last man standing). This is a team that was supposed to be a legitimate contender at the start of the season, just two months later and they’re staring down the barrel of missing the playoffs for the first time in 7 years.

With so many key players missing significant time and no hope of competing with the Warriors or other top teams in the foreseeable future, the Clippers need to go the way of the Timaru District Council and finally blow the whole thing up.

‘Blow it up’, ‘tear it down’, ‘tank’, ‘forced rebuild’, there are many terms you can use to describe the controversial process popularized by Sam Hinkie and the Philadelphia 76ers, it involves accepting that you can’t compete against the big dogs for a few years, trading away your best players for draft picks and cap space, trotting out sub-par teams and losing as many games as possible to get the best odds in the draft lottery.

Philly fans faced a crisis of confidence when their franchise openly tanked for draft picks, they endured years of losing and being the laughing stock of the NBA. It's been 6 years since Sam Hinkie begun ‘the Process’, he may been martyred before ever seeing the fruits of his labour, but the results  are starting to speak for themselves. The 76ers are now firmly entrenched in the Eastern Conference playoff race, they also have one of the most exciting groups of young players in the NBA featuring two future MVP Candidates. It's now time for the Clippers to sell what they can, lose as much as they can, or face years in basketball purgatory; an empty shell with nothing inside but memories of former glory, just like the Hydro.

Luckily, outside of Griffin (5 years, $173 million), the Clippers don’t have many large, long-term contracts. If they chose to trade Danilo Gallinari, who would be a great piece on several contending teams, there would be no one on their books apart from Griffin, slated to earn more than $4 million annually (dependent on free agency, player options and rookie salaries). So the Clippers will have money to spend. If they can move Gallinari, DeAndre Jordan (who teams are already circling in the wake of their injuries) and anything else not nailed down for draft picks and young talent, the Clips could be looking at a young promising core in a few years with a hopefully healthy Griffin around to lead them.

Jordan’s the biggest trade piece here, despite the fact his defence has taken a step back this year and the fact that he’s about to get a lot more expensive (eligible to make up to $32 million annually from next year), he’s still a game-changing centre (4th in rebounding percentage, 3rd in both True Shooting percentage and Effective Field Goal Percentage league wide) who a team lacking a strong interior presence (like Lebron James’ Cavs) might desperately need and would cough up valuable assets for. 

Due to his impending free-agency, where he could leave for nothing before the roof collapses on him, Jordan needs to be traded this season. Doing so would be a definitive sign that the Clippers are ready to accept their fate - this would be the Council clearing out the vagrants and detonating the dynamite (do they still use dynamite to blow up buildings?). 

Anyway, the Clippers don’t have long to make a decision about what they want their future to look like, and in a way it’s a blessing in disguise. They’re are on a losing streak since Griffin’s injury and they’re showing no signs of turning it around. If they start trading their valuable pieces for assets now, they should (in theory) continue to lose games, giving them better odds for a top pick in a draft loaded with talent, before the NBA rule change comes into force next year. 

While most would agree that an old, inhabitable, eyesore of a building should come down to make way for something new, the idea of a sports team losing on purpose, or at least not trying everything possible to win now, is a concept that doesn’t sit well with the people of Aotearoa. Our professional sports leagues, for the most part, don’t include drafts or transactional markets, so its much harder to foresee a situation where an underachieving team like the Blues could benefit from taking a couple of seasons off, regardless, I can imagine a lot of fans turning their backs on a team that openly sacrifices short-term success for a long-term plan that may never pan out, and honestly I’m not sure I’d blame them. 

That’s the Clippers’ biggest fear right now, they’re trying to compete in a city that the Lakers have owned forever. They have had mild success recently but ultimately underachieved for years and their fans need a sign of good faith that the organisation can turn things around.

They’re stuck between holding on to past successes, however mediocre they were, and the great unknown that is letting go. But sometimes things can’t be restored to their old glory, no matter how hard you fight, sometimes you need to blow it all up to make way for something new.