Are the new-look Clippers still in contention?
The Los Angeles Clippers went into the 2025-26 season expecting to compete in the Western Conference, and they never got there.
After finishing 42-40 and getting eliminated in the play-in tournament by the Golden State Warriors, the franchise is staring at a summer full of hard questions about where it goes from here.
A year ago, this team went 50-32 and made the playoffs as a fifth seed.
This time around, they brought in aging veterans like Brook Lopez, Bradley Beal, and Chris Paul, building the oldest roster in NBA history at an average age of 33.2 years.
The thinking was that experience and star power would be enough, and it turned out to be the opposite.
A Season That Went Wrong Early
The Clippers opened the year 6-21, with a 2-13 November that ranks as the worst month in franchise history.
Beal played just 10 games before a fractured hip ended his season, and Chris Paul was released in December after falling completely out of the rotation.
Injuries to Derrick Jones Jr. and Bogdan Bogdanovic made things even worse.
There was a stretch where the Clippers won 16 of 19 games from late December into January, getting back to 22-24 behind a resurgent Kawhi Leonard who averaged 27.9 points, 6.4 rebounds, and 3.6 assists per game while shooting 50.5 percent from the field.
But the roster around him was too flawed to keep that going, and the team faded down the stretch.
Why The Window Shut
The trade deadline was the precursor.
On February 4, the Clippers sent James Harden to Cleveland in exchange for Darius Garland, who went on to average 19.9 points and 6.4 assists across his 19 games in Los Angeles.
A day later, Ivica Zubac was shipped to Indiana for Bennedict Mathurin, Isaiah Jackson, and multiple draft picks, including a first-rounder that landed at fifth overall in the 2026 lottery.
Those moves made it obvious that this was no longer a team trying to win a title and that the front office had started pulling back.
How They Get Back
The fifth pick gives the front office a real shot at a difference-maker in what scouts have called one of the deepest draft classes in years, and prospects like Keaton Wagler and Darius Acuff Jr. have already been linked to the Clippers.
Garland is a real building block at 26 years old with playoff experience and the ability to run an offense.
Leonard, turning 35 in June and entering the final year of his $50.3 million deal, is the biggest variable on the roster.
Whether the Clippers try to build around a Garland-Leonard pairing or move Leonard for more future assets will define the entire summer.
The championship window that opened when Leonard arrived in 2019 is done.
But the Clippers have picks, they have Garland, and they have flexibility, which is more than most rebuilding teams can say.
