Three Things NBA Preview: Los Angeles Clippers
As I detailed a few weeks ago, I’m once again re-appropriating the Three Things I Noticed on League Pass format to preview the upcoming season. Instead of three things I noticed, it’ll be something more along the lines of three things I’m looking forward to, interested in, or want to see. Some of them might be narrative-based, some might be stats, and some might include video. But they'll all be focused on the 2025-26 campaign.
The schedule for those posts will be as follows (podcasts for each division with Mo Dakhil are in parentheses):
- Atlantic Division (BOS, BKN, NYK, PHI, TOR) (Podcast)
- Central Division (CHI, CLE, DET, IND, MIL)
- Southeast Division (ATL, CHA, MIA, ORL, WAS) (Podcast)
- Pacific Division (GSW, LAC, LAL, PHX, SAC) (Podcast)
- Sept. 29-Oct. 3: Northwest Division (DEN, MIN, OKC, POR, UTA)
- Oct. 6-10: Southwest Division (DAL, HOU, MEM, NOP, SAS)
So without further ado, let's get to the Los Angeles Clippers, who were dramatically booted from the playoffs by the Denver Nuggets in yet another Game 7 calamity.
Age, just a number?
I wrote at length about the Clippers and their potential age issue earlier this offseason. Here's are a few relevant excerpts:
With a minutes-weighted age of 29.7 years old, last season's Los Angeles Clippers were the oldest team in the NBA. It marked the third consecutive year that they were either the league's oldest (2023-24) or second-oldest (2022-23) team, and considering what happened to L.A.'s roster during the season — with Kawhi Leonard (33) missing significant time (45 games), Norm Powell (31) doing the same (22 games), and a good chunk of those available minutes being distributed to guys like Derrick Jones Jr. (27), Amir Coffey (27), Terance Mann (28), Jordan Miller (25), and Kobe Brown (25) — one could easily see how the Clippers' minutes-weighted age could have pushed over 30 like it had the year before.
This offseason, the Clips have only gotten older. They signed Brook Lopez (37) to be their backup center. While they traded Powell for John Collins (28 this season), they added Bradley Beal (32) to take on Powell's role. They'll also have Bogdan Bogdanovic (33) for the full season rather than splitting the year with him and Mann, and they won't be giving any minutes to the departed Kevin Porter Jr. (24 last year). And of course, Kawhi will be 34 this season while James Harden will be 36, Nic Batum will be 37, and Kris Dunn will be 31. After adding in Jones (28 this year) and Ivica Zubac (same), we can reasonably expect that not a single player in the Clippers' rotation will be younger than 28 years old.
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Historically, older teams have been more successful in the regular season than younger ones — but only to a certain point. Once they've hit a certain age bench mark, the wins started going away. [A]s team age pushed above 30.5 years or so, they have tended to see their record slide a bit.
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The last over-30 team to win the title was the 2013 Heat. All but one title team since then has had a minutes-weighted age below 29. Notably, the lone exception was the 2020 Lakers, who won the title in the NBA bubble — under far different circumstances than most title teams. (They didn't have to travel during the playoffs, which seems like a particularly big thing.) An over-30 team hasn't been to the Finals at all since 2018, which was the last season that LeBron's Cavaliers teams dominated the Eastern Conference. (There have, though, only even been three over-30 teams since then. They all lost in either the first or second round.)
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None of this means that the Clippers can't find postseason success. So long as they can stay healthy, they should be one of the better teams in the Western Conference. They should be able to escape the play-in tournament again. But the idea of an older team like this, especially one with serious injury issues and a clear athleticism deficit, making it through the four-round gauntlet of physicality and stamina that is the modern NBA playoffs seems less likely than at any point in recent history.
Of course, we also know that the world (probably) doesn't end after this season. If the Clippers don't win it all next year, they won't have to fold the franchise. They'll have other opportunities in the long run of history. But I think it's especially interesting to consider that concept in the context of this specific team. Mo and I have been talking on our podcast about how the Clips are making sure not to sign (m)any deals that last beyond the 2026-27 season, hoarding cap space to make significant changes after that. They're clearly gearing up for a two-year run at most, then planning to pivot to ... something else. That two-year run, though, looks like it will be dedicated to a team that may be anachronistic in more ways than one.
