Los Angeles Clippers 2025-26 Season Prediction | How far will their experience take them?

Los Angeles Clippers 2025-26 Season Prediction | How far will their experience take them?

Back here on HQ Spotlight, the Clippers making more moves this off seasonason. Chris Paul signing a one-year, $3.6 million deal with the Clippers. It’s a reunion for CP3 and the Clippers. He played there, remember, from 2011 to 2017, and is the franchise’s all-time assist. So, Paul spent last season with the Spurs, averaging just under nine points and seven and a half assists per game. He currently has the second most assists in NBA history. He’s going to be entering his 21st NBA season and just turned 40 years old in May. So, if we look at the Clippers and what they’ve done in totality this off season, of course, Norman Pal no longer there. He is in Miami. They resigned James Harden and then Chris Paul and not too long ago we were talking about Brad Beal joining the roster. Brook Lopez as well. All right, so let’s welcome in John Gonzalez and Sam Quinn. Gentlemen, always good to be with you. So CB3 back with the Clippers. He is a 40-year-old point guard on a roster that’s already on the older side of things. It’s certainly not OKC. It’s his 21st season in the NBA. So Sam, I’ll come to you first. What does Chris Paul ultimately bring to this Clippers team? Yeah, backup point guard was a major problem for them last year. They just couldn’t score whenever James Harden went to the bench. They tried it with Kevin Porter Jr. with Bogdan Bogdanovich. Nothing worked. Well, now you have two Hall of Famers, right? Or at least two former all-stars, Chris Paul and Bradley Beal, to help juice that bench offense. That was one of the two issues last year, right? Can you score when James Harden goes to the bench? And can you get anything out of your backup bigs? They also bring in John Collins and Brook Lopez. I think it’s been a great off seasonason for them. Yes, they are old. I will acknowledge that. But it helps when you’re this deep if you are going to be that old, right? Chris Paul’s not coming in here to start 82 games like he did for the Spurs last year. You know, between him and Kawhi Leonard, James Harden, Brook Lopez, it is an older roster, but they go 11 deep. they’re gonna be able to keep these guys fresh across the full season and not overuse them. So overall, I I really like the offseason that they had. I think Chris Paul’s going to be a really nice fit for them. I also think Chris Paul is going to be a really nice fit for them. And you know, we could say old or we could say experience, right? Well, I’ve I’ve heard that you’re only as old as you feel. Age is just a number. Chris Paul played all 82 games last season. He was really good. You don’t need him to run out there and play 48 minutes a game. You don’t even need him to play 30 minutes a game. If you get 15 to 20 minutes of Chris Paul off the bench, that’s a win for the Clippers. I think the same thing with Brook Lopez. Brook Lopez, he he had another good season last year, maybe a little bit down numbers-wise by his standards, but still perfectly capable of being Zubach’s backup. Yes, the Clippers are a little bit older relative to other teams in the Western Conference, but they’re also loaded. All these guys that they added in are really talented players. And not for nothing, Norm Powell had his best season last year and they move on from him and get a little bit younger, four years younger by adding John Collins. So, not everybody has aged up on this team. Look, they are uh at a little bit of an advanced age in the NBA. However, when you look at the talent and the depth on the Clippers roster, I think that they’re as deep as any team in the NBA right now. Yeah. I mean, to your point that age is just a number. We just showed the all-time assist leaders and two of those guys are over 40 years old and still playing at a pretty high level for being 40 plus in the NBA. So Sam, I know you mentioned you you love what the Clippers have done this off seasonason. John, I’ll come to you first. Grade it as a whole for the Clippers. What is the grade? Professor John Gonzalez. Professor John Gonzalez. You know, I’m generally a tough grader, Jacqueline. As you know, I’m giving it a big fat A on this one. I love what they’ve done. Look, they won 50 games last year. They were the five seed and look they were one game away. They had they took the the Nuggets to seven games in that series. They were one game away from advancing. I thought, you know, there there could have been a temptation to just run that whole thing back. Instead, as I mentioned, they move on from Norm Powell. I love Norm Powell, but 32 years old, they decided, hey, John Collins is going to bolster our front court. They go and scoop up Brook Lopez. That was a major issue for them. Who’s going to be their backup big behind Zubach? Asked and answered. Then all of a sudden, as you heard Sam mention, the question was, “Okay, well, what are we going to do when James Harden isn’t on the floor?” I thought if they could get one of Brad Beal or Chris Paul, they’d be set. Instead, they get both of those guys. I I just I love this team. Uh they’re super deep. They’re bench. I It’s going to be interesting to see what Tyoo does with the starting rotation, if it’s going to be Beal in the starting rotation or Chris Dunn or Derrick Jones or whatever direction he goes. But he has so much optionality here. I think they just did a really good job. Now, all of that said, despite the fact that I’m giving them an A, I still think they’re probably only like the fourth best team in the Western Conference because that’s how good the West is, but still full marks for the Clippers. Yeah, that’s why I’m only giving them an A minus, John, because they’re still not quite as good as the Thunder, the Rockets, or the Nuggets, but they did improve pretty substantially, right? If you look at Norman Powell for Bradley Beal is basically a wash, then you get John Collins, Brook Lopez, and Chris Paul having given up basically nothing, right? You’re just adding on top of the team that you already had. I think they match like the age is going to be a concern to some extent, but having all of that depth helps balance it out. There isn’t really a discernable weakness on this team right now, right? There’s not one specific thing you can look at and say they can’t do this, they can’t do that. They can build their offenses big or their lineups big. They can build their lineups small. They can build their lineups around offense. They can build them around defense. They have a little bit of everything. I think they’re very well equipped to get through the 82game grind. Maybe not quite at that top tier of the Western Conference with the Thunder, the Nuggets, and the Rockets, but right below them, and I think in a pretty strong fourth in the West. So, you guys touched on it. This kind of feels like a depth move, right? And they do have a lot of options in terms of the roster. So, um Sam, what do you think that Tailoo, how does he ultimately balance out this roster here, and you see it up on the screen in a, as you guys noted, a very competitive Western Conference. Yeah, I think balance is going to be the key, right? You assume that James Harden, Kawhi Leonard, and Avisa Zubach are going to be in the starting lineup. You’ve got two spots left to work with. I think the way to manage this is you give one of them to an offensecentric player and one to a defensecentric player, right? So, you would presume is that Bradley Beal and Derrick Jones Jr. as the last two starters or is that Chris Dunn and John Collins the last two starters? Last year they won primarily with defense. I think their hope this year is to be a little bit more balanced, right? Because when they couldn’t get stops last year, they just couldn’t win because they weren’t scoring. Now they can win with offense or defense. I think they’ll mix and match as the season goes along, right? I know we look at these depth chart and we say, “Oh, it’s going to be the same on opening night that it is in game 82.” That’s never the case. Guys get hurt. You know, matchups dictate different ideas and lineups. I think they’ll make changes, but I think the broad idea you’re going to be looking at here is can you get one offensecentric player and one defensecentric player in the starting lineup with that core three? Yeah. Just as I look at it, I’m leaning Chris Dunn and John Collins for those other two starters. But Sam hit on it. I mean, the mix and match options here for Tailoo are pronounced, right? I mean, as the season goes on, it’s a grind. Everybody knows that 82 game season over the course of the year, you’re going to have a lot of injuries. You’re going to have knocks. You’re going to want to rest guys. You’re not going to want to play Kawi Leonard. 82 games, he’s not even capable of that. You probably want to ease back on the throttle a little bit on James Harden, who played in the 70s last year. And now you have the options to do that. So, uh, Tyou is a really smart head coach. Last year, we saw what happened, right, where they went in with an identity. They knew that they weren’t going to have Kawhi Leonard for much of the start of the season. They didn’t. And they decided to build basically the entire team around a defensive ethos with a heavy dose of James Harden. Now, you don’t have to do that. You still have the defensive options, but now you have a whole host of offensive weapons as well. So, I would like to see them bring Brad Beal off the bench along with CP. You got a nice second unit, but so many different ways that Tailoo can go here. All right, gentlemen. And the time has come for the season prediction. And John, I know you always skirt around it and you try not to get specific, but you have to get specific as as you as much as you possibly can here. Give us the season prediction. I don’t need like the score. I feel like Sam will do that for us down to like their last game of the season, but give us a little something more. John, you know what? People want to think that it’s a black and white world, Jacqueline, but I’m here to tell you, first you’re ever going to hear it. It’s gray out there and it’s gray with the Clippers. So, I’ve got them as the fourth seed. So, as Sam mentioned, and I think this is exactly right, Oklahoma City number one with a bullet. Second tier, I love what the Rockets have done and the Nuggets have done in this off seasonason as well. So, I’ve got them just below the uh the the Oklahoma City Thunder. And then right below that, I’d have the Clippers on a line with the Warriors, the Wolves, and maybe to a lesser extent, the Lakers, but solidly the fourth seed. Jacqueline, you’re looking for specificity. I’m saying that they’re solidly the fourth seed. Now, what is that we’re down to when they make it into the playoffs? They could, this is where the gray comes in. This is where the variance comes in. I could see them winning a round or two and making the conference finals. I could also see them getting bounced out in the first round because the Western Conference is so low to Jaclyn. So, I’ll give you fourth seed for sure. And then after that, we leave it to the basketball gods. John, you call that specificity. Here’s specificity. They’re the number four seed. They win the first round in seven games and then they lose the second to Oklahoma City in sixth. There, that’s specific. If they’re going to be the four or the five seed, you know, their second round opponent is going to be number one. And we presume that number one’s going to be Oklahoma City. I don’t think they’re good enough to beat the Thunder, but I think they’re good enough to give them a tough series. So, give me a second round exit in six against the Thunder for the Clippers. All right, Sam. I think we got to give John some kudos because I don’t think we got to see the last couple of teams that we talked about here. So, we’re taking baby steps, John and Sam. We appreciate it as we take a closer look at the Clippers and what they look like now with this kind of revamped roster and all the moves that they made in the off season. Odds to win the Western Conference. And boy oh boy is it stacked. The Thunder, of course, they are the favorites to win it at plus 145, but the Clippers maybe some nice value there at plus a,000.

John Gonzalez and Sam Quinn join CBS Sports HQ Spotlight to discuss the Los Angeles Clippers offseason and preview the 2025-26 season.

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