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The L.A. Clippers made a move for the future in trading Blake Griffin to the Detroit Pistons before the deadline.
Many Clippers fans were upset at the move and didn't understand why the franchise would give away their best player and the one person that made the team relevant in a city that has always been dominated by the Los Angeles Lakers.
But even with all that, Clippers owner Steve Ballmer felt it was important to let Griffin go in order to bring the team into the modern NBA, per Kevin Arnovitz on ESPN.
Article Continues Below“[Griffin] is obviously a superstar player,” said Ballmer. “But if you look at what happened injury-wise, if you look at the kind of chemistry we were getting on our team, the thing you can see at the high level with the numbers when I started — one guy got all the assists, one guy got all the points and one guy got all the rebounds. It's not all quite that way, but I think in the modern NBA, we were seeing it more and more — there's a greater distribution of responsibility.”
Ballmer has a point. With the way the team was before the trade, every star player had his own specialty, and they did not do much of anything else on the floor. And that worked to a certain extent.
But by getting Avery Bradley and Tobias Harris in the trade, the Clippers are now in a position that they can have a more egalitarian system, allowing the team to be a threat at multiple points of attack instead of just two or three.
Of course, time will tell if Ballmer's idea turns out to be right. But for now, the outspoken owner believes in the move and he has a clear vision of the team's future.
