Three players all found new homes, and the Clippers ended the summer holding almost none of what they wanted.
The final week of August cleared the free agent board, and the Los Angeles Clippers watched most of it happen from the outside.
Peyton Watson finalized his move to Cleveland last week, Jonathan Kuminga agreed to sign with Minnesota on Wednesday, and Bennedict Mathurin, the restricted free agent sitting on the Clippers' own books, agreed to join New Orleans the same day.
Three young players the team spent the summer connected to are all headed elsewhere, and the story of how each one got away keeps circling back to the same frozen trade.
Three Names, Three Misses
The Watson pursuit was legitimate.
ESPN's Shams Charania reported the Clippers were among the teams that made offers for the restricted free agent before Cleveland won out, and the Cavaliers completed a five-team sign-and-trade paying Watson $88 million over four years.
Watson averaged 14.6 points, 4.9 rebounds and 1.1 blocks for Denver last season, exactly the profile of a young two-way wing this roster lacks.
Kuminga reached the market unrestricted after his team option was declined in June, and Scotto reported in July that the Clippers had sign-and-trade interest, but that interest never became a deal and Charania reported Wednesday that Kuminga chose a two-year contract with a player option in Minnesota.
Mathurin stings in a different way because he was already here.
The Clippers acquired him from Indiana in the February Ivica Zubac trade and gave him an $8.8 million qualifying offer, and multiple insiders reported in July that the team had interest in working out a new deal.
Instead, his representatives asked the Clippers to withdraw the qualifying offer so he could take a two-year, $16 million deal in New Orleans, per Charania.
Mathurin scored well after the trade but shot just 20.7 percent from three in 26 games in Los Angeles, so there is a fair debate about how hard the front office should have fought to keep him.
The Frozen Trade Behind Everything
HoopsHype's Michael Scotto's July reporting tied all of it together, noting the front office was reluctant to make significant roster moves while the Kawhi Leonard trade with Toronto sits on hold during the league's investigation.
The $17 million trade exception from the John Collins sign-and-trade was the tool for a Kuminga deal, per Scotto, and it went to absorbing Max Strus instead, per ESPN's Bobby Marks.
Strus is a real player and the front office has high hopes for him, but he was the consolation prize of the summer, not the plan.
President Lawrence Frank said back in April that the team had put itself in a strong position with emerging young players, draft capital and cap space.
"I think we do have great hope and optimism with our future," Frank said then, and this was the summer that optimism was supposed to turn into players.
With Darius Garland now the centerpiece of a rebuild that outside voices call promising, the Clippers can still sell a direction.
They just spent a whole summer unable to sell it to the three young players they kept getting linked to.
