LA Clippers: After another huge injury, is it time to blow it up?

Blake Griffin’s injury is fatal to the LA Clippers’ hopes of contention this season. So is it time to blow up their core and start over?

The 2017-18 NBA season is officially over for the LA Clippers.

As it turns out, building a team around injury-prone players means you’ll probably have a lot of injuries.

Danilo Gallinari has missed the past 10 games with a glute injury, and coach Doc Rivers has given the impression he may be out a while longer.

Doc Rivers said the team won't be rushing Danilo Gallinari back because they don't want him to get hurt again, and he "is not coming back until he's right."
— Michael Gallagher (@MikeSGallagher) November 25, 2017

Patrick Beverly, part of the return in the Chris Paul trade, is out for the season after a knee injury that was suddenly more serious than expected. A meniscus repair that would keep him out for 4-to-6 weeks became microfracture surgery that requires up to nine months of recovery.

And now, most worryingly for the Clippers, Blake Griffin is reportedly out for two months after injuring his knee. The injury certainly didn’t look good, with teammate Austin Rivers landing on Griffin’s leg and pinning his foot.

ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that there is no structural damage to Griffin’s knee. While this is a positive, the injury is still a fatal blow for the Clippers.

These players getting hurt isn’t unexpected – none of them have played more than 71 games in any of the past four seasons – but there was hope that this team could be successful if they could stay relatively healthy.

Now that that idea is down the drain, is it time for the LA Clippers to blow it up and start again? They were already struggling with Griffin on the court, sitting at 8-11 and 10th in the West. Without their star player, it’s hard to see them staying close to the playoff race.

The first and easiest move would be to trade DeAndre Jordan. Even before Griffin’s injury this was being talked about as a possibility, and those talks should only increase now.

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He’s their most valuable asset, and any playoff team in need of rebounding and rim protection should be on the phone and working on a deal.

SCIC’s Ryan Magdziarz wrote earlier in the week about the Bucks as a potential trade partner. There have also been rumours of a Jordan-Tristan Thompson swap with Cleveland.

There are certainly plenty of teams that would love to have Jordan, and the Clippers should be demanding at least a mid-to-early first round pick in any deal. That alone could be worthwhile for a team that doesn’t appear set to contend in the immediate future.

It was proven last year that Lou Williams is still a sought-after commodity, as the Rockets gave up a first-round pick to get him from the Lakers. He’s also shown that he can still get buckets, as he scored 42 points on Monday and is averaging 18.6 points per game.

Past them, though, it becomes a little less clear-cut. Gallinari would be in demand as a scorer if it weren’t for his terrible injury history. Austin Rivers has developed into a solid 3-and-D player, but it’s hard to know if teams would offer enough to pry him away from Coach Dad.

The biggest question mark is Griffin himself. The Clippers signed him to a five-year maximum extension over the offseason, worth a total of $173 million.

There’s no doubt that he’s worth that contract when healthy, but his career thus far has shown that he can’t stay healthy for any extended time. Once he has fully recovered from this latest injury, the Clippers will need to decide whether or not he’s the man to lead them into the future.

Even if they did decide to trade him and completely rebuild, it’s unlikely they would get a fair return given his injury history. Teams want All-Stars, but they want them on the court and not the physio’s table.

It’s more likely that the Clippers would trade Jordan and any other in-demand assets, and retool on the fly around Griffin. It’s not ideal, but it may be their only real option.

Must Read: The Milwaukee Bucks Should Trade For DeAndre Jordan

Of course, the LA Clippers could remain as is for the rest of the season, and try to keep this core intact. But given the early results, that may just be a waste of time.

There’s a chance that, eventually, this team could jell and improve. But with Griffin out for so long, and so many key pieces constantly missing, they may never get the chance to.