Clippers begin free agency by adding Brook Lopez. Could Chris Paul be next?

New York Times

7 hours ago

The LA Clippers headed into free agency having handled the expected items. James Harden was who president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank declared as the team's 'top priority' following the draft. He is back, with a player option for 2026. Frank said it was 'a dark day' when backup power forward Nicolas Batum was included in the trade that brought Harden to LA from the Philadelphia 76ers in the fall of 2023, signaling an intention for Batum to be back. Like Harden, Batum declined his player option and signed a new deal with the Clippers that gave him a raise, while the Clippers have a team option on Batum in 2026.
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I identified two needs for the Clippers, ones that mirrored their needs for the draft but were more acute because the Clippers needed short-term playable options: ball handling and frontcourt help. One of my named targets was Milwaukee Bucks center Brook Lopez. My inclusion of Lopez, who turned 37 years old in April, had as much to do with the connections as it did with basketball.
Lopez was born in Los Angeles County in 1988, along with twin brother and 16-year NBA veteran Robin Lopez. In 2008, the New Jersey Nets drafted Lopez out of Stanford with the 10th overall pick. Lopez's first NBA head coach? None other than Lawrence Frank, who also was on the Brooklyn Nets coaching staff to begin the 2013-14 season. In Lopez's final season with the Nets in 2016-17, one of Brooklyn's assistants was Shaun Fein, who is now the shooting guru on LA head coach Tyronn Lue's staff; that also happened to be the season that Lopez made 134 3s after only making 3 3s in his first eight NBA seasons combined.
When Lopez was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers in 2017, one of the assistants was current Clippers assistant coach Brian Shaw. The Lakers also had a young center on their roster in 2017-18 named Ivica Zubac.
And, if nothing else, Lopez is a notable Disney fan. And Intuit Dome happens to be 30 miles away from Disneyland.
Whatever it took for Lopez to leave a place where he was a co-starter next to two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo and a NBA champion in 2021, it worked in the Clippers' favor. Lopez agreed to sign a two-year, $18 million deal to join the Clippers Monday. Lopez will backup Zubac, a major departure for Lopez after starting all but 50 of his 1,105 career games.
Time to update the Clip graphic — Brook Lopez gives the LA Clippers a professional center behind Ivica Zubac @TheAthletic https://t.co/5Wb45syFfr pic.twitter.com/cNtPfk6cz4
— Law Murray 🚨 (@LawMurrayTheNU) July 1, 2025
Frank hinted that the Clippers would target a veteran center. After the first round of the draft last week saw the Clippers select Penn State center Yanic Konan Niederhauser with the 30th overall pick, Frank said, 'We'll probably have at least three centers. We may want to get a different complement to balance it, because it's hard at any level for rookies to come in, but especially on a team like ours. But we'll kind of see how the roster plays out.'
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The Clippers have that complementary look with their three centers now. Zubac just finished third in points scored out of post ups this season behind All-Stars Nikola Jokić and Alperen Şengün, per Synergy, while being named to his first All-Defense (second) team. Niederhauser is a raw 6-foot-11, 243-pound athlete who had the best vertical leaps of any of the centers at the 2025 combine. And Lopez is one of six players in NBA history (along with Clifford Robinson, Rasheed Wallace, Dirk Nowitzki, LeBron James and Kevin Durant) to have at least 1,000 made 3s and 1,000 blocked shots, and the only one of those six with more than 2,000 blocked shots. The only other players last season besides Lopez to have at least 100 3s and 100 blocks each were Alex Sarr, Myles Turner and All-Stars Jaren Jackson Jr. and Victor Wembanyama.
Lopez doesn't just provide solid 3-point shooting (37.3 percent 3s last season) and rim protection (1.9 blocks per game last season). He made 82.6 percent of his free throws and 50.9 percent of his field goals overall as part of his 13.0 points per game in 31.8 minutes. While Lopez isn't the All-Star scorer that he was in Brooklyn, he is still capable of being an inside-outside threat, and he will occasionally put the ball on the floor to take advantage of mismatches. Lopez can spot up as well as hit 3s as a trailer, and he does respectable big man things such as screen, roll, and cut into dunks. Lopez still had enough juice to catch 15 alley-oops last season, and as Zubac found out in February, Lopez can still put back a missed shot from the top rope:
Lopez has never been a strong passer, having never averaged more than 2.3 assists per game in his 17-year career, and he struggled mightily in the postseason against the Indiana Pacers. While Lopez has a massive body at 7-foot-1, 282 pounds, he is a boxout player more than a player who will secure a high share of rebounds. And defensively, Lopez is limited to drop coverage, especially at this stage of his career. Lopez and Zubac shared the floor for 13 games together seven years ago with the Lakers for seven minutes, and that is not a reasonable option in 2025.
But the Clippers having Lopez as a likely 20-minute backup is a major improvement over what the team has been used to behind Zubac over the last six years. Montrezl Harrell won a Sixth Man of the Year award in 2020 while coming off of the bench behind Zubac, but the Clippers moved on from him after the bubble. Serge Ibaka was signed to start over Zubac in 2020, but back issues led to Ibaka's decline, Zubac's permanent re-entry into the starting lineup, and a DeMarcus Cousins cameo. Isaiah Hartenstein went from 2021 training camp invite to a replacement for Ibaka, but the Clippers prioritized backup point guard in the 2022 offseason while completely punting the backup center position, choosing instead to lean into wing heavy lineups that featured Batum and Robert Covington. In the middle of the 2022-23 season, LA finally relented and got Mason Plumlee to replace Moses Brown as the backup center. And when Plumlee was injured in November 2023, the Clippers signed Daniel Theis as a backup. Last season, the Clippers went from Mo Bamba to a combination of Drew Eubanks and ball handler Ben Simmons behind Zubac, who saved the Clippers by playing at least 22 minutes in all 80 of his regular season games and at least 31 minutes in each game of the playoffs against the Nuggets.
Lopez' addition leaves the Clippers with just one player left to fill a second unit spot with their existing roster. LA has multiple playable centers in Zubac and Lopez. They have multiple wing defenders in Kawhi Leonard and Batum. They have multiple point of attack defenders in Kris Dunn and Derrick Jones Jr. The Clippers have multiple on-off ball shooters in Norman Powell and Bogdan Bogdanović. And Harden and Leonard are the two stars. Harden just needs a true backup point guard.
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At the top of my list at the point guard position is perhaps the greatest Clipper ever, and that's Chris Paul. The drawbacks with Paul are obvious: he's a 6-foot 40-year-old who has played 20 NBA seasons. But the Clippers have the longest active streak of consecutive winning seasons at 14 years, and that streak started with Paul's arrival to the franchise in 2011 and continued after Paul was traded in 2017 to Harden's Rockets.
While Paul was with the Clippers, both Lue and Frank were assistant coaches under Doc Rivers. Steve Ballmer bought the team in 2014, midway through Paul's tenure. Paul also happened to visit Intuit Dome for Game 3 against the Nuggets, sitting next to Disney CEO Bob Iger (you see, a potential networking opportunity for Brook Lopez if it comes together).
The best Clipper of the Lob City era is here pic.twitter.com/86ovEqe5pH
— Law Murray 🚨 (@LawMurrayTheNU) April 25, 2025
It helps that Paul can still play. Paul just started all 82 games for the San Antonio Spurs last season, averaging 8.8 poiints, 3.6 rebounds, 7.4 assists, 1.3 steals and 1.7 3s while shooting 37.7 percent on 3s and 92.4 percent on free throws. The only player older than Paul in NBA history who started all 82 games in a season was John Stockton, and Stockton didn't play 20 NBA seasons. Like Lopez, Paul would be brought in to be a backup to one of LA's most important players, theoretically dropping his minutes to around 20 per game at most. Paul would bring what the Clippers need most based on their weakness from last season offensively, and that's a player who can take care of the basketball. And while Paul's age and size makes him a defensive liability, he still has a nose for the ball, as Zubac found out on New Year Eve:
If LA's backup point guard isn't Paul, then the pickings get slimmer, although they get younger and bigger by default. There's Malcolm Brogdon, who was a reported Clipper for a few hours prior to the 2023 NBA Draft. There's Cameron Payne, who played in New York last season and backed up Paul in Phoenix. There's Cory Joseph, who started in the playoffs for Orlando and won a ring with Leonard in San Antonio. There's Spencer Dinwiddie, a Los Angeles native who played with Lopez in Brooklyn. Perhaps the door could be open return for a Ben Simmons return now that the Clippers have a floor-spacing center in Lopez.
It all may come down to the money. The Clippers still have about $5 million left to spend from the non taxpayer midlevel exception, but they could also waive Drew Eubanks and his $4.8 million salary. Flexibility is key, especially considering how the Clippers don't need much from the backup point guard spot; they just need some Harden insurance.
If Paul joins Lopez, then it makes the NBA's oldest team that much older. But LA also can say that the players in their late 30s are also backup up by young players who need to be ready to play anyway. There's no pathway toward playing time like being asked to step up when a player near (or at) 40 needs a vet day. That will definitely help Niederhauser spell Lopez, or 2023 first-round pick Kobe Brown spell Batum. Niederhauser was selected over a better shooting center like Maxime Raynaud or a more proven defender like Ryan Kalkbrenner in part because Lopez was in their sights, while the presence of Brown reduced the need for a draft pick such as Rasheer Fleming. Players like Cam Christie or Jordan Miller would be needed to play if players ahead of them can't make it.
We'll see if it is all this simple for the Clippers in the coming days. What appears certain for now, though, is that the Clippers will be old in 2025-26. But they should also be good — and deep.
(Benny Sieu/USA Today Sports)