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LA Clippers Rumors: Team Looking At Massive Roster Overhaul With Blake Griffin, Chris Paul Free Agency

By Ryan DeVault
Published on: 04:41 PST, May 28, 2017

LA Clippers rumors will go beyond the free agency of Chris Paul and Blake Griffin during the NBA offseason. The Clippers will have to address a lot of spots on the roster, with an expectation that the team won’t be able to afford most of the role players that were with the franchise during the 2016-17 NBA season. It will lead to a massive roster overhaul for the Clippers, so fans are going to need to prepare to see a lot of new faces on the court next year.

A report by Yahoo! Sports stated that the Clippers plan to “retool” and not “rebuild” this year. That could all be contingent on how the beginning of the NBA offseason progresses, though, as there have been some recent LA Clippers rumors suggesting that the team could be at risk of losing Paul or Griffin. As previously reported by the Inquisitr, the San Antonio Spurs are very interested in signing Paul to become their starting point guard.

Raymond Felton, Brandon Bass, Mo Speights, and Alan Anderson are the first group of players who are unlikely to return to the Clippers. All four players are veteran free agents and will likely have to go if Paul and Griffin are offered max contract extensions. Luc Mbah a Moute and JJ Redick are about to become unaffordable as well unless the front office decides that it wants to go deep into the luxury tax penalties in order to retain the entire roster.

There had been several LA Clippers trade rumors about the team trying to unload the contracts of Austin Rivers and Jamal Crawford, but those players might be too expensive for another team to just absorb. For the 2017-18 NBA season, Crawford will make just over $14 million and Rivers will earn just under $12 million. Each player is also still under contract for the following season, but Rivers has a team option that the Clippers could decline.

All of this information is known to Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, and their agents, possibly giving both players an incentive to look at signing somewhere else during free agency. The All-Stars will make more money by signing contract extensions with the Clippers, but could also go to contending teams if the right offers came along. NBA rumors have suggested Paul and Griffin would both be good fits with the New York Knicks if they simply want out of Los Angeles.

A rough piece of news for Clippers fans is that the team has no selections in the 2017 NBA Draft. The Toronto Raptors own the rights to their first-round selection and the Boston Celtics control the second-round selection. This is due to the Jared Dudley trade in 2014, and the trade for Doc Rivers in 2015. It means there won’t be an influx of young talent unless the team can find some nice unsigned free agents coming out of college after the draft.

Primary to all of these LA Clippers rumors is that the team has nine free agents heading into the NBA offseason. That number does count Paul Pierce, though, who is retiring from the league and likely heading straight to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Four starters (Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, Luc Mbah a Moute, and JJ Redick) will hit free agency, putting Doc Rivers and the rest of the front office in a very difficult position as the team tries to remain competitive in the Western Conference.

It would be nearly impossible for the franchise to head into an immediate rebuild unless they could work out sign-and-trade deals with other franchises for draft picks. Instead, the team will likely try to move forward with a core of Paul, Griffin, and DeAndre Jordan and hope that age doesn’t catch up with them too quickly. There are going to be a lot of LA Clippers rumors over the next few weeks as the NBA offseason begins and a lot of questions will be answered about roster construction.

[Featured Image by Steve Dykes/Getty Images]

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