INGLEWOOD, CA — Ivica Zubac anxiously walked through the entrance of his stomping grounds. Over the years, he's watched as the franchise broke ground on the Intuit Dome, attended promotional and fan events, contributed his thoughts as to what the arena would need from a player's perspective, and attended multiple tours of the facility before it officially opened in August 2024.
This time, however, the Croatian center walked through an entrance he wasn't entirely familiar with alongside a group of players he wasn't yet familiar with to watch his LA Clippers play basketball. Only they were no longer his Clippers.
“I mean, I don't even know yet,” Ivica Zubac told ClutchPoints on his mental processing of the trade in an exclusive interview. “It doesn't… I don't think it hit me yet. It's going to feel different for sure. It's all I knew for the past eight years, and it's going to be different. It's going to take some time to adjust.”
Zubac had been a Clipper for eight years that saw him sign three different contracts and play with 83 different teammates across 565 games, regular season and playoffs. His 565 games played are the fifth most in Clippers franchise history behind only DeAndre Jordan, Randy Smith, Eric Piatkowski, and Loy Vaught.
At 29 years of age, Zubac spent more than a quarter of his life thus far in Los Angeles as a Clipper, which is what made the shocking trade that much more stunning. Now, he's a Pacer, but that doesn't even begin to explain the whirlwind that was NBA trade deadline week.
Ivica Zubac had been on standby the first week of February and saw the birth of his first child that Tuesday, just two days before the NBA's trade deadline. Teams had been pursuing Zubac for months trying to pry the center out of Los Angeles when the team started 6-21 in December. But the Clippers remained steadfast in their messaging: They were not interested in trading Zubac, and that was reflected in their enormous asking price.
That Tuesday night was also when the Clippers pulled the trigger on a franchise-altering trade that sent James Harden to the Cleveland Cavaliers in exchange for Darius Garland.
A deal had been sought out for months from Harden's side of things, league sources told ClutchPoints, due to the Clippers being unwilling to commit to paying Harden beyond the summer of 2027 and the fact that they were at the bottom of the Western Conference in December.
The Clippers fully intended on keeping the core of Harden, Zubac, and Kawhi Leonard together past the trade deadline, especially having seen a strong turnaround of their season. But Harden stunned everyone within the organization with his request and with seemingly no other options, the Clippers pulled the trigger on the trade.
The deal opened the metaphorical door for the Indiana Pacers to try and nab the center of their future from Los Angeles.
The Pacers lost Myles Turner to the Milwaukee Bucks last summer after reaching the NBA Finals and falling just one game short of winning the NBA Championship. Even without Tyrese Haliburton this season, Indiana knew they needed to find a replacement heading into the 2026-27 season when he returns.
With Harden already gone, the Pacers felt this was their time to pounce, getting increasingly aggressive over that Tuesday night and well into Wednesday to try and pry Ivica Zubac from the Clippers. By Wednesday, conversations entered the serious stage although no deal had materialized because Indiana was not meeting the Clippers asking price.
Tyrese Haliburton was among those making strong pushes for Zubac behind the scenes, league sources told ClutchPoints, with the Pacers star feeling like the Clippers center was the missing piece for their championship pursuit. He wasn't the only one, which is a substantial reason the Pacers decided to go all-in the Thursday morning of the NBA trade deadline and further lift the protections on the 2026 first round pick they would be trading away.
By about 9AM PST — three hours before the deadline — the Clippers were going to accept the Pacers trade offer of Bennedict Mathurin, Isaiah Jackson, and two first round picks for their prized, home-grown center.
“It was tough when Lawrence Frank called me to let me know that it was happening and then just kind of being on the phone with people from the Pacers and going through all that. Then it hit me that the [Clippers] were going on a trip and it'd be good to go over there so I called Lawrence, he said that anytime I wanted to come by, I'm free to come by.
“So I went over there, caught a lot of people before they left for the trip and yeah we sat there for five, six hours, I don't even know, but it just talked about memories and all the stuff that we did and what we went through and a lot of people cried. I cried. It was tough, man. It was tough. You always think it could happen — the trades and stuff — but you never really expect it, you don't want it to happen. So once it happened, yeah, it was tough.”
The Clippers team plane was subdued on the way to Sacramento for a matchup against the Kings. The usually boisterous bunch was anything but on the flight, as many tried to deal with the frustration and sadness internally.
And while all of this is part of the business of the NBA, it doesn't even take into account the fact that Zubac was forced to leave his wife and one week-old newborn daughter to fly across the country to Indianapolis. To their credit, Indiana has been extremely considerate and flexible to Zubac's situation, allowing him to stay in Los Angeles a few extra days before his physical, to spend All-Star weekend in Los Angeles, and to rehab his season-ending fractured rib injury in L.A. as well.
The Pacers also played it extremely safe with Ivica Zubac's left ankle, which he suffered significant ligament damage to in December, but had been playing through the injury when he was well enough to with the Clippers. Indiana found no reason to play their center if he was anything but 100 percent and sat him out.
Just like that, however, his eight seasons with the Clippers franchise — a place he called home — came to an end.
“It's funny when people ask me something about my time on the Lakers and about some coach or some player or something. I'm like, ‘I don't even know.' I didn't know. I had no clue about basketball. I kind of started learning basketball and everything around it when I first got to the Clippers.
“I was a kid when I came over, and like, from day one, [Patrick Beverley], he got on my ass. I learned a lot from him, and that was kind of the start of everything. It tested me a lot, and playing with all these great teammates, great players, I learned so much. There's a lot of stuff I'm going to be able to take with me and try to use somewhere else.”
Zubac was initially hurt, frustrated, and felt defeated. What was supposed to be the happiest time of his life with his wife and child turned chaotic and despondent.
Zubac arrived to the Clippers in a trade with the Los Angeles Lakers on February 7, 2019. The Clippers played against the Indiana Pacers the same day they facilitated the trade for him with the Lakers.
Eight seasons and nearly 600 games are more than enough to make memories for a lifetime and identify as a Clipper for life.
“The first game in Boston, we were down 28 and a half, we came back and won that game,” Zubac recalled. “That was like the start of like my Clippers journey. And then the playoffs against Warriors, being down 31, coming back against one of the best teams ever. Then next year, we had a team that I thought and we all thought was going to win. Man, the 31 point, 29 rebound game against the [Indiana Pacers]. Rick [Carlisle] mentions it a lot. He happens to mention it a lot.
“[Terance Mann's] Game 6, that was incredible. I think it was, like, probably one of the first games we had fans in that year. That was the first one, and him going crazy, making all the shots, and us going to the first Conference Finals in the history of this team.”
But nothing compares to the personal satisfaction that last season gave him and everyone on the team.
The 2024-25 season saw Ivica Zubac take his game to the next level, nearly becoming an All-Star, finishing sixth in Defensive Player of the Year voting, and being named to the All-Defensive Second team. In a career-high 80 games played, Zubac averaged career-highs with 16.8 points, 12.6 rebounds, and 2.7 assists to go along with his 1.1 blocks per game while shooting 62.8 percent from the field.
It also came in a year where the Clippers were projected to win about 37 games and finished with 50 wins capped off by an overtime thriller against the Golden State Warriors on the final day of the regular season.
“Last year was the most fun I had playing basketball,” Zubac told ClutchPoints. “Just kind of being an underdog, people not expecting anything from us, winning 50 games, and being a big part of that, the way the fans and everyone else, kind of stood behind us and supported us all year long. That was really special.
“Getting that triple-double last year, [Bogdan Bogdanovic] making that shot. That was one of the best memories, but there were so many, like, even off the court memories I'll remember that I created with people in the organization that will stick with me for the rest of my life. There's so much, it's hard to single all of them. Yeah, it was great.”
More than anything, though, Zubac regrets that he leaves the bowels of Intuit Dome without delivering on a championship banner to hang from the rafters.
“I really wanted to be a part of a first championship for this team and that's something that always, you know, that's going to be the only like kind of bad feeling that I have out of this: just not winning a championship. Because I felt like we had some opportunities, we had teams that could do it, but just never had luck with health and that's the only thing that's kind of going to sting.”
Even though he didn't play in the game, the LA Clippers put on a tribute video for the return of Ivica Zubac when the Indiana Pacers came to town on March 4th. And while it was expected to be emotional, it was entirely different thing to experience it.
The video started by showing a young, 21-year old Zubac back in 2019 expressing his excitement to join the franchise with Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth's, “See You Again,” playing in the background.
The Ivica Zubac tribute video from the LA Clippers pic.twitter.com/mrCc3m2h1s
— Tomer Azarly (@TomerAzarly) March 5, 2026
“That was… Once the song hit, they shut the lights down, and I heard the song, I was like, ‘oh, okay. That's a good choice for that video.'
“It was really good. They did a good job capturing all the good moments, from the first year until [the end]. Just seeing all the old teammates in there. Kind of reminded me of all the good times that I had here. It was tough, man. It was tough. Very, very special.”
When I tell you the entire Clippers team — players, coaches, and staffers — watched Ivica Zubac’s tribute video during the timeout… https://t.co/1hQzUkwqRT pic.twitter.com/SHKsr1eBdd
— Tomer Azarly (@TomerAzarly) March 5, 2026
Ivica Zubac and Kobe Brown had their lockers decorated by the Clippers for their returns tonight pic.twitter.com/lzkK28ZaH8
— Tomer Azarly (@TomerAzarly) March 5, 2026
The first thing Zubac did at the completion of the video was turn to The Wall and acknowledge the raucous section full of Clippers diehards that gather each game by the opposing team's bench.
“Clippers fans are amazing,” Zubac said. “They took me in when I was young, always supported me, even sometimes when I didn't do so well. They always had my back, always trusted me and one of the best fans in the world. Like I've said before, it's not the biggest fan base, but it's definitely a very proud fan base that appreciates its players. They've been through a lot of stuff, a lot of bad luck, put a lot of bad luck in a lot of different seasons and the way they come out every single game and support you. Like they're really genuine and I had so much fun. I still can't believe I'm going to be going against them in the future. Those are my people for life, for sure.”
Zubac is one of those players who didn't necessarily wow you every night on the stat-sheet, but made his game-changing impact felt as a defensive anchor and lead communicator for the Clippers. By the end of his tenure, Zubac was someone the Clippers heavily relied on offensively as well with his increased offensive repertoire.
“I felt pretty proud when I saw the video and when I saw all these people got up for me and, I don't know 10-15,000 people were up on their feet and cheering for me. I was like, ‘I did something right over here,' and just to feel their love and support, I'm very proud of that.”
Zubac finished his eight year Clippers career fifth in total games played, sixth in total blocked shots, second in field goal percentage, second in total rebounds, and tied for ninth in triple-doubles.
“Every single night, I really tried to represent and play hard for them, do my best, and I tried to win a championship for this franchise. Unfortunately, I couldn't, but I did everything. I tried to do everything I could and for them to recognize that, that's special.”
