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Adam Silver and the NBA brought the hammer down.
Among the painful punishments for the Clippers — such as suspending owner Steve Ballmer for a year and not letting him be around the team — nothing is as devastating as losing five first-round draft picks. Those are the lifeblood of team building in the modern NBA.
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How do the Clippers not just get through this but find a path forward? What happened to the Minnesota Timberwolves when they were stripped of five first-round picks a quarter century ago? Is there a more recent roadmap for the Clippers? Let’s break it all down.
What happened to Minnesota?
The only other team hit with this kind of punishment — losing five first-round picks — was the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2000, when they were caught circumventing the salary cap for Joe Smith. That precedent is what Adam Silver used to take five Clippers picks away.
So what happened to Minnesota? It’s not apples-to-apples, but it also foreshadows concern for Clippers fans.
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Those Timberwolves had Kevin Garnett in his prime — including during his MVP season — so for the first three years after the ruling came down, they won at least 50 games and even reached the Western Conference Finals in 2004. With all due respect to Darius Garland, the Clippers don’t have anyone of that caliber on their team.
Then things got ugly for Minnesota. It missed the playoffs for the next 13 consecutive seasons and 16 of 17. Garnett was traded in the middle of that. Minnesota made just two first-round picks between 2001-2005, but only one of them, Rashad McCants, really produced for them. To be fair, a lot of the years the Timberwolves continued to miss the playoffs were after they got their picks back — the NBA restored two of them for essentially good behavior — but the Timberwolves’ issues went well beyond just losing picks. They were their own worst enemy for a while.
That’s where things are a little better for the Clippers — they have a couple more picks in this mix, and they have been smart about picks and player development in recent years.
What do Clippers do?
Talking to league sources in the past…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/where-la-clippers-164842372.html
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Publish date : 2026-09-04 16:48:00
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