The Drubbing

Elgin Baylor has recently filed a lawsuit against the Clippers, their owner and the NBA.   He is claiming that he was released based on race and age, and that his $320K a year salary was grossly underpaid compared to the other GM’s in the league.  OK, lets take a look at the past 22 years of the LA Clippers.

The Clip have a combined record of 619-1153, that is a winning percentage of .349.   They have made the playoff 4 times in his 22 years, making it out of the first round only once, in 2005.  The highest they have finished in their division is 2nd (once in 2005), and they have only finished above .500 twice in the past 22 years (’05 & ’91).

So their overall record has not been good at all, in fact it is downright horrible.  Let us look at 22 years worth of draft picks:

• 1986 – no 1st round pick, and no one worth mentioning drafted later on
• 1987 – 4th pick, Reggie Williams (passing up Pippen, Reggie Miller, Kevin Johnson, Kenny Smith)
• 1988 – 1st pick, Danny Manning.  A very good pick who would become the face of their franchise.
• 1989 – 2nd pick, Danny Ferry (passing up Tim Hardaway, Shawn Kemp, and Clif Robinson).  Ferry did not want to play for the Clips (who can blame him) so he was traded for Ron Harper and 2 first rounders.  Not bad.
• 1990 – 8th pick, Bo Kimble & 13th Loy Vaught
• 1991 – 22nd pick, LeRon Ellis
• 1992 – 16th pick, Randy Wolf and 25th Elmore Spencer (passing on Hubert Davis, Latrell Sprewell)
• 1993 – 13th pick, Terry DeHere (passing up Sam Cassel and Nick Van Exel)
• 1994 – 7th pick, Lamond Murray & 22nd Greg Minor (passing up Jalen Rose, Eddie Jones)
• 1995 – 2nd pick Antonio McDyess, not bad but he did pass up Rasheed Wallace and Jerry Stackhouse.
• 1996 – 7th pick Lorenzen Wright (passing up Steve Nash, Derek Fisher, Big Z, Peja, Kobe Bryant, Jermain O’Neal, YIKES)
• 1997 – 14th pick Maurice Taylor.
• 1998 – 1st pick Michael Olowokandi, 22nd Brian Skinner (passing up Mike Bibby, Antwan Jamison, Vince Carter, Dirk, Paul Pierce, Al Harrington, Larry Hughes, Rashard Lewis, OUCH)
• 1999 – 4th pick Lamar Odem, not bad but passed on (Rip Hamilton, Corey Maggette, Jason Terry, Shawn Marion and AK47)
• 2000 – 3 top 20 picks – 3rd pick Darius Miles, 10th Keyon Dooling and 18th Quentin Richardson (passing on Jamal Crawford, Miker Miller).  Why use all 3 picks, and maybe trade them unless you think this is a gifted class?
• 2001 -  2nd pick Tyson Chandler which was traded to Chicago for Elton Brand (passed on Tony Parker, Gilbert Arenas, Joe Johnson, Pau Gasol, Mehmet Okur).  A gifted class, which they DON’T spend a draft pick on.
• 2002 – 8th pick Chris Wilcox, 12th pick Melvin Ely (passing on Amare, Caron Butler, Tayshaun Prince, Carlos Boozer)
• 2003 – 6th pick Chris Kaman, not bad.
• 2004 – 4th pick Shaun Livingston and his knees. (passing on Devin Harris, Luol Deng, Andre Igudala, Al Jefferson, JR Smith, Josh Smith, Jameer Nelson)
• 2005 – 12th pick Yaroslav Korolev (passing on Danny Granger, Nate Robinson, David Lee)
• 2006 – No first round picks
• 2007 – 14th pick Al Thornton, great pick.

The Candyman came, he saw, he left the NBA quickly.

I count about 5 good 1st round picks in 22 years.   If this was a fantasy league the GM would either have been kicked out for being noncompetitive, or been the complete laughing stock of the league.  The amount of all stars and future Hall of Fame players that have been passed up in his 22 years of drafting is unbelievable. Out of sheer luck he should have landed at least 1 great player to build the team around.  We have not even begun talking about the poor free agent acquisitions and bad coach hirings (I am looking at you Dunleavy).

Maybe Elgin thought that since the Clips have kept him for 22 years of being an inept GM, why all of a sudden fire him now?  What did he recently do that caused the team to be worse than the laughing stock of the league?  That is the only half-way explaination for his behavior, because if he honestly thinks the only reason he was fired from being the GM of the LA Clippers is beacuse of his race or age then he needs to take a step back and realize that there are playoffs in the NBA and teams play well into April and May.