Blake Griffin AND Paul George Are OFF The Market

Woj goes to ESPN that takes his phone away from him and boom immediately gets cucked by Shams, times are changing folks.

Safe to say, this is a huge bomb for a number of teams. Phoenix and Denver never even got the chance to meet with Blake, and for Boston, well there went your Plan B if you don’t get Hayward. Huge, huge domino as things are starting to heat up.

For the Clippers, this is a very risky move, but one they absolutely had to make. With the Clippers looking to build a new arena and Chris Paul no longer there, you need someone to help sell tickets. You also don’t want to lose a really really good player in Blake if you are going to now have to convince other NBA players that LAC is still a destination team. Here’s the thing though, DeAndre is up before you know it and may choose to go elsewhere, and other than him the Clippers don’t really have much else.

The big issue isn’t the money in my opinion, that’s the going rate for premiere talent in the NBA, it’s the years. I truly think Blake would have looked elsewhere if LAC didn’t give him that 5th year, but since he got it why the hell wouldn’t he take it? When you have his injury history you don’t give up an extra year of security at ridiculous money. If Blake is able to stay healthy, it’s a win/win for everyone, if not, they just carved out $34M of cap space for a guy in a suit. Mind you he’s currently recovering from offseason foot surgery which is always what you want and usually never gives big men problems.

I hope Blake is able to stay healthy because at 100% he can be a top 5ish player in the league. On a Celtics level I’m relieved we won’t have to worry about his injury history (as if they could actually get him in the first place), but I’m now 10 times more worried about what the fuck happens if they don’t sign Hayward.

And just as I was about to hit publish, we have this news!

Jesus Christ I can’t fucking keep up! Well this isn’t the best news for our boy Danny Ainge. The Pacers did not care about his time table and went with a different offer. I wrote it this morning, we can’t judge Ainge until we saw what happened over the next few days, and now that we know, I’m a little upset. If that really is what it took to get PG13 for a year, did IND really prefer that over whatever Ainge had to offer? He couldn’t add picks in to sweeten the deal without them being top tier assets? It’s all very confusing. If Ainge wanted to wait until they met with Hayward before coming back to IND, well he and the rest of us are left with our dicks in our hands….again.

Since he’s not trading for PG13, what the hell was the point of that Draft day trade? To honestly build through the Draft still? OK well then why was the owner talking about trying to get two stars? We aren’t even at midnight yet and the 2 huge stars are off the board. It just doesn’t add up.

I’m sure this is where we’ll hear the Pacers wanted BKN or LAL and starters even though they clearly were cool with taking less than that. Is having all these picks actually hurting the Celtics? Teams just only ask for their best and then say fuck it and go somewhere else? I don’t know what the hell is going on but it is not working (yet). Here’s the only thing I can think of. IND didn’t want guys like Avery or Marcus who could potentially be gone after a year, and being left with Jae + a mid 1st pick wasn’t enough for him. Both Oladipo and Sabonis are signed for multiple years, but even as I type this I feel like I’m spinning something that isn’t true.

This is why I’ve tried to warn everyone about what to expect for the Celtics over these next few days. It’s fun to talk rumors, but it’s dangerous. What we just experienced in the last 10 minutes is the Celtics free agency I know and hate and frankly we should have all seen this coming.

LIKE WE SAY EVERY GODDAMN YEAR.

NBA free agency so hot right now. NBA free agency.