The Los Angeles Clippers have finished cleaning house from their recent playoff failures, reportedly shipping star power forward Blake Griffin to the Detroit Pistons for several players and draft picks.
According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Pistons will send the Clippers three players, one at each position — forward Tobias Harris, guard Avery Bradley, and center Boban Marjanovic.
Los Angeles also will receive two draft picks in the trade — one first-rounder and one second-round pick. The Pistons are currently 9th in the Eastern Conference.
But the centerpiece of the trade is Griffin, whom the Clippers took first overall in the 2009 NBA Draft and who has led a team that had long been the league’s laughingstock into its first period of sustained success in the 2010s.
Griffin won Rookie of the Year in 2010-11 after missing the 2009-10 season due to injury. He has been named to five All-Star teams.
In his seven completed seasons, he only once averaged below 20 points and only once fewer than eight rebounds. For his career he has averaged 21.5 points and 9.4 rebounds.
The Clippers failed to make the playoffs just once in those seven seasons, though they never broke through to the Western Conference Finals.
The team had regressed a bit the last couple of years and shipped its other perennial All-Star — point guard Chris Paul — to the Houston Rockets before this season began. The pieces acquired in the two trades will enable the team to accelerate its rebuilding process.
Harris and Bradley are both averaging 15-plus points per game for the Pistons, and the 7-foot-3 Marjanovic is averaging 6 points and 3 rebounds in less than 10 minutes per game.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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