DeAndre Jordan's Future

So the truth finally comes out huh?
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Not that this storyline hasn’t been speculated back and forth nearly a year anyway but there was alot of smoke surrounding the relationship or lack of between Clippers leader Chris Paul and its defensive anchor DeAndre Jordan. In a season that had many realistic championship expectations, in alot of ways it was derailed in part due to the dysfunctional relationship between Paul and Jordan throughout much of the season.

According to ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz

He was tired of Paul’s constant barking and petty gestures, like distributing high-fives to the three other guys on the floor following a timeout but somehow freezing out Jordan. Optics aside, the biggest issue for Jordan was that, despite the leaps and bounds he made to be named first team all-defense, the Clippers always treated him like the player he was when he arrived in the NBA, and never like the player he’d become.

​While the main reasoning for DeAndre bolting to the Mavericks had more so to do with his desire to be “the man” and to have a offense actually run through him, Chris Paul didn’t necessarily make the decision much more compelling to Jordan. According to many Paul didn’t necessarily try hard to recruit Jordan to remain in Los Angeles during his Free Agency soiree’.

https://twitter.com/BillSimmons/status/617068530098286592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

I’ve been on record that from solely a basketball perspective, I do not like the fit of DeAndre bolting to Dallas. I haven’t seen anything in his tenure with the Clippers that leads me to believe Jordan can have an offensive system run through him. At the same token I do respect the fact that he was willing to leave more money on the table in the name of respect and make the attempt to become a more offensively assertive basketball player.

All in all it will be interesting to see how both franchises, Dallas and the LA Clippers are affected by this transfer of power. The bottom-line is the Clippers today are not even close to the same team as they were last season and when you combine that with San Antonio big free agency moves, the return of Kevin Durant and the Oklahoma City Thunder plus the Golden State Warriors as the defending NBA Champs with the same roster it is expected that Los Angeles will be pegged down a few spots in the Western Conference pecking order.
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At least we’ll have moments like these to remember.