Ping Pong balls and Blake Griffin

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That was a problem in the past, but Sterling has been willing to spend for the last several years. In 2003 he matched Elton Brand's $82 million offer sheet from Miami, and he was going to match Miami's offer sheet for Lamar Odom that same summer (6 years, $65 million), but Odom pleaded with the Clips not to match it because he didn't want to stay with them. He signed Baron Davis to an enormous deal last summer. He gave Chris Kaman and Corey Maggette enormous extensions several years ago.

The Clippers have been well above the minimum team salary threshold the last several years and have been willing to add salaries (i.e. absorbing Camby's contract this year without trading back any salary), but Mike Dunleavy (and Elgin Baylor before him) has no idea of how to assemble an NBA team.

It really is a shame too, because if they were to get Blake then they would have a really great group to build with. It really is a shame too, I really think Gordon could be a genuine real deal player. Who knows how he keeps his head on straight and salvages a legitimate career on that train wreck team.

 

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Memphis Grizzlies...Odds of first pick: 7.5%

Memphis is a really hard one to figure out. At first, looking at their roster would lead you to think that they would be a great place for Blake to wind up. They settled on a starting lineup of Mike Conley, OJ Mayo, Rudy Gay, Darrell Arthur and Marc Gasol, which is a pretty solid group of young, talented players. The weakest link of that group is Darrell Arthur by a pretty wide margin. Throw Blake in at his spot and that group looks a lot better.

However, Memphis is a great example of what happens to a small market team that is horribly mismanaged. Attendance figures are emphasized because of narrower range of money making opportunities, so when you botch your roster and aren't competitive, and people stop coming then you get what is happening with the Grizz right now. They still have Darko on the books next season for $7.5 mil, 2 more years paying Greg Buckner $4 mil (how did that happen?), and two more years for everyone's favorite bad contract, Marko Jaric at $7.5 mil. Buckner and Jaric are untradeable for another year, and since Darko doesn't have much to offer in terms of what he does on the court, he probably won't move until the trade deadline next year.

So, the Grizzlies are in bad financial shape as an organization. They have some cap space but aren't likely to spend it for another year when Gay's extension would need to kick in and after some of those bad deals come off the books. They have five legit young players (six if they add Griffin) who are all on their rookie contracts, with Gay coming due for an extension after next season, Conley and Gasol the next year, Mayo and Arthur the year after that. Since they will never be a luxury tax team, it is highly unlikely that they would be able to sign more than three of these guys (though there is a chance Conley and Arthur could be signed for reasonable deals). My guess is they would try to keep Gay, Gasol and Mayo, with the idea of Mayo moving to the point similarly to Gilbert Arenas.

So, if you add Blake to the mix, its really tough to see where things would wind up for him. Maybe they would do things just like I laid it out above then make a decision about Rudy Gay when Blake's deal comes up. Or maybe the roster will get completely overhauled in another couple years. Who knows? I feel the same way about the Grizz as I do about the Clippers...It should be a great situation for Blake to go into, but the franchise is so awful that its hard to imagine it actually working out.