Sam Amick

I think it was like seven or ten minutes later, a story pops from Chris Mannix at Sports Illustrated that this deal was being discussed.

Our old buddy from the Athletic, Kelly Yiko at Yahoo, had something as well.

You know, Shams reported after that that Harden and the Clippers were trying to find a new home.

It's interesting.

I know we're going to unpack it, but, you know, this year that the Clippers have had, you know, they get off to this 6-21 start.

Um, at that time, you know, I wrote about what are they going to do with the roster?

I talked to people within the organization about like, you know, is it fire sale time?

Like it's, it's really bad.

And they had looked at some things and things were not good.

But then as you guys know, they completely flipped the script.

Um, so the stunning part of it late last night and to your point, Dave, when

When you just think it's a run of the mill game, you know, at the end to a dome is that, you know, it felt like things were better.

But but James, obviously, he's got a different view of the matter.

Yeah, well, the quick backdrop as to your first question is that, you know, we've written about this a lot, is that the Clippers are just widely known to be

laser focused on the summer of 2027 in terms of clearing their books now okay that's not that revelatory but as we get closer to that time i think the uncomfortable part is that my read of it is that like that applies to everybody now they've got zubats on a 20 million dollar deal for the 27 28 season he's the only guy with guaranteed money but you know for kawhi leonard for james harden these guys who you know are up in age i mean kawhi less so than james but

who are playing good ball, you're getting to this point where you look out and it's like, okay, am I, am I part of the Clippers plans at all after next season?

And the answer appears to be no, like for anybody.

And I'm talking about like,

know it's it's a reset it's a let's see who's available in that summer of 27 and go from there so when you have that level of you know if you call it kind of disloyalty or kind of like lack of commitment you're going to have a guy like james especially who is you know headed you know had departures before read the room and figure out how do i feel about this more imminently his contract uh for next season got a player option

It's only guaranteed for $13.3 million of his $42 million.