Justin Verrier

There's just way too many questions and way too many variables for the Clippers, even at their absolute best, to feel confident that they're going to continue to be at their absolute best.

And so, so long as that's true,

Everything should be on the table, including Evita Zubats, who's been one of the most rock-solid players over the last several years, an incredibly useful center in a variety of ways, which I'm sure we're going to get into from the Pacers' side, and leaves a gigantic hole behind him as far as what the Clippers are going to do with all this the rest of the way.

Yeah, they're easily the most exciting part of the tank race from here on out.

And some of that is because, yes, like right now they are well positioned to potentially keep this pick.

I would think that they're probably going to slide a little bit in the lottery odds, not in the standings.

Rise in the relative order.

Rise in the relative standings.

Because when you think about who the bad teams in the league are right now, the Pacers may be tied for the third best lottery odds, but Washington is going to be shutting down AD and Trey Young, presumably.

They're going to be leaning into being as bad as possible.

Dallas needs to be worse.

They need to cash in on this pick, specifically this year.

So I would think we can count on them to be worse.

Memphis, without Jaron Jackson Jr., will definitely be worse.

Brooklyn, honestly, just getting started as far as what they're capable of tanking-wise.

So there is like a real sweet spot here where, and we should say, if you're not familiar with pick protections, basically all this means is the only way the Pacers keep the pick is if it's between the fifth and the ninth pick in the draft, like a very delicate needle to thread.

And I think what's even weirder, because we've seen complicated pick protections before, something I've never seen before is if it does end up protected and the Pacers keep their pick this year, it kicks into an unprotected first five years from now to the Clippers.

I've never heard of anything even remotely on that timeline before with protection.

I mean, I don't think it's going to be enforced very strongly because how can like there's so much murky gray area between why guys are sitting and when and for how long.

And like, I don't even know how you legislate that stuff because we've seen the league try and it just doesn't work very well.