Last Updated on May 13, 2026 12:14 pm by Mike Passador | Published: May 13, 2026

The Clippers dealt with some serious drama before the ball even went up in the air and got off to a disastrous start before rebounding and making one of the more remarkable in-season comebacks we’ve ever seen. They made a few bold trades to reshape the roster and managed to compete deep into the calendar even with significant departures that shook up the entire depth chart. It still ended short of the true goal but the Clippers put together a season that should generate plenty of discussion, if nothing else.

How’d It Go?

It started bad, got a whole lot worse, then got pretty good before getting sad again.

In September, Pablo Torre dropped a bombshell report about Kawhi Leonard’s endorsement deal with Aspiration serving as a way for the Clippers to circumvent the salary cap. In essence, it is reported that Steve Ballmer orchestrated a $28 million deal between Leonard and the now-bankrupt Aspiration. Ballmer also invested $50 million in Aspiration in September of 2021 and they were the first founding partner of the Intuit Dome after a $300 million deal later that month. Leonard didn’t appear in any of the proposed marketing for Aspiration, and overdue payments to him were made from Aspiration shortly after Clippers partners invested similar sums of money into Aspiration. Leonard and the Clippers said they welcomed investigation and would cooperate fully, but it was not a great look and we’re still waiting on the results from the league.

On the court, the Clippers were hoping to rebound from their latest postseason disappointment. They traded Norman Powell (headed for free agency) to get John Collins and then signed Bradley Beal, Brook Lopez and Chris Paul as free agents, with Paul’s reunion expected to be a feel-good story of the franchise’s all-time great coming home to help the Clippers get over the hump. After an 82-game season for a resurgent Spurs squad, there was legitimate reason to believe that he could help the Clippers and bolster the offense when James Harden and Leonard needed some rest. On paper, the team was deeper and more battle-tested.

It did not work. Beal was limited after offseason surgery and suffered a season-ending hip fracture a month into the season. The Clippers were all out of sorts and Paul wasn’t even in the rotation. The team eventually asked him to just go home, basically telling the franchise icon that he was not helping the team in any way and in fact, making things worse due to his undermining of the coaching staff and behavior in the locker room. The Clippers sat 6-21 and looked to be headed for a painful season with the Leonard drama still looming over everything.

Whatever the reason, the switch flipped. The Clippers ended up being one of the best teams in the league from that point on, closing with a 36-19 record. They leaned a little more heavily on Kobe Sanders and Jordan Miller. John Collins heated up. Harden and Leonard were both terrific. Ivica Zubac was as steady as ever. LA was in no position to tank given the amount of picks going to Oklahoma City as a result of the Paul George trade, so it was not surprising that they put the pedal down to get out of the gutter. What was surprising was just how far they got.

That didn’t stop LA from operating with the future in mind, however. When Harden signaled that he wouldn’t re-sign on whatever framework the Clippers had proposed, they worked quickly to find a deal with the Cavs, bringing Darius Garland back in to give the team a legitimate long-term option in the frontcourt. After turning down offers for Zubac over the last couple of seasons, they finally found a deal worth making that sent the big man to Indiana for Bennedict Mathurin, Isaiah Jackson, two first-round picks and a second-rounder. It added a scoring threat to offset the losses of Powell and Beal while also adding significant draft capital for the future.

Those moves had the potential to send LA back to the lottery given that Garland had been playing hurt all season after toe surgery in the summer, but the Clippers kept finding ways to win despite a major overhaul in personnel. Lopez stepped up to the plate and held it down as the new starting center while Garland eventually played his way into shape. Derrick Jones Jr. had a nice run of play after being limited by major knee problems earlier in the year. Through it all, Leonard was dynamite, playing in 65 games and delivering elite fantasy value from wire to wire in perhaps his best season yet.

Unfortunately the Clippers could not climb high enough to earn an outright playoff spot in a stacked Western Conference, and fell to the Warriors in the Play-In when Leonard was bottled up by Draymond Green. It was a sour end to a ridiculously wild ride of a season, and while there were still some positives to be taken — a great team-wide turnaround, Leonard’s brilliance and good health, Garland’s return to form, an infusion of youth and future assets — the Clippers ultimately came up short of their original goal. They’re still waiting to hear about potential punishment from the Aspiration scandal and the possibility of trading Leonard seems greater than ever. The sequencing of events makes this more of a feel-good story than you would expect, but at the end of the day the Clippers had another year of Leonard-led hoops end before the second round.

Coaching

Ty Lue has proven himself to be one of the league’s top coaches over the years and even though the Clippers haven’t had much postseason success, little blame falls at Lue’s feet. Whether it’s roster construction or ill-timed injuries, LA’s shortcomings are pretty clearly not the coach’s fault (primarily). This season may have been Lue’s best work yet, as the Clippers rebounded from a dreadful start to become one of the best teams in the league and dealt with significant roster changes even after the turnaround began.

To start at 6-21 with a season-ending injury to your starting SG and the drama of the Chris Paul situation and get back to .500 at any point is a serious achievement. To do so while also losing James Harden and Ivica Zubac along the way is highly impressive, and Lue pushed the right buttons in getting contributions from Kobe Sanders and Jordan Miller while also getting John Collins and Derrick Jones Jr. going in the second half of the season. Darius Garland also looked revitalized in his time with the Clippers and while health had a lot to do with that, the Clippers certainly put him in positions to succeed.

This season was littered with opportunities for everything to go off the rails but Lue was able to guide this team to a postseason spot after a significant amount of hurdles. Beyond the Xs and Os, Lue’s ability to get the squad back in the hunt is a testament to his skills as a leader. Lesser teams — and even some better teams (hi, Houston) — would’ve folded up shop. The Clippers became the first team ever to finish a season 15 games over .500 after sitting 15 games under .500 at any point, erasing their 6-21 start with a 36-19 finish that was the fourth-best record in the West over that span.

The Players

Kawhi Leonard

SF, Los Angeles Clippers

ADP: 48.3/65.4 (Yahoo/ESPN) | Total Value: 8/5 (8/9-cat) | Per-Game Value: 6/4 (8/9-cat)

It was a busy year for Leonard to say the least. Everything started with strong evidence of cap circumvention, including trees planted or not planted, and Leonard continued to draw ire as the alleged inspiration for the NBA’s maligned 65-game rule for postseason awards. With the Clippers a perennial disappointment, this could’ve been the year where it all blew up, with Leonard’s off-court (alleged) scandal the final straw. For a while, it looked like the end of the road. The Clippers were a mess in the early going, sliding to 6-21 while Bradley Beal got hurt and John Collins slumped, but Leonard put the team on his back and dragged them back into the hunt. James Harden threatened to derail all that momentum with his trade request but the Clippers, led by Leonard, kept on rolling and made the postseason even with Harden and Ivica Zubac getting traded away. Leonard saw most of his primary supporting cast changed over the course of the season but responded with arguably the best year of his storied career.

Leonard delivered new career-highs in points and 3-pointers per game and had his most steals since 2017-18, and him shooting .505 from the floor on nearly 20 attempts per game makes this most efficient season to date when accounting for volume and degree of difficulty – a career-best True Shooting of .629 is also pretty good evidence. Even better is that Leonard was able to stay healthy, cruising to that 65-game mark without any real fanfare. His only standout absences were a 10-game right knee problem and a three-game left ankle sprain. Fantasy GMs were even able to count on Leonard down the stretch as he missed only four games (including the season finale) from February 1 through the end of the season. In a year when so many other top-of-draft options missed time, Leonard proved to be an elite pick who was widely available outside the early rounds. The per-game value was never in question and Leonard managed to outdo even those expectations while playing a ton of games, including pretty much all of the fantasy playoffs. Odds are that the fantasy GMs who took Leonard in the third or fourth (or even fifth!) round were close to the title this year.

Darius Garland

PG, Los Angeles Clippers

ADP: 67.3 / 77.7 (Yahoo/ESPN) | Total Value: 153/198 (8/9-cat) | Per-Game Value: 65/102 (8/9-cat)

The struggles that hampered Garland into the 2025 playoffs carried over as offseason toe surgery prevented him from ever finding his footing with a Cavs team that had eyes on a championship. There was hope that Garland would be ready for opening night but he missed the first seven games and then seven of the next 13 for good measure. Just as he was starting to find his rhythm, Garland suffered a right great toe sprain that resulted in 13 games on the sidelines. He actually missed 19 straight games after that toe sprain, but the final six were for left great toe injury management when the Clippers said he was still dealing with issues from that offseason procedure.

Burying the lede a bit, but astute readers will put two and two together and figure out that he was traded to the Clippers. With Cleveland stuck in a rut and James Harden declaring he wouldn’t be sticking around in LA, the two sides made a relatively quick and painless deal that saw the Cavs add a Hall-of-Famer for a player who didn’t quite fit, while the Clippers got a lot younger and were able to get something pretty good in return for Harden. Garland took a couple games to shake off the rust after that, which was a best-case outcome considering it was the same toe injury from months ago giving him problems, but was tremendous once he got up to speed. Garland was rejuvenated by a prominent role on a team that was prepared to treat him as a core player and started producing serious fantasy value as a solo lead guard again. He was just a top-140/100 value (8/9-cat) with the Cavs, dragged down by .451 shooting, but finished his season on a top-40/55 sprint with the Clippers in which he shot .478 from the field (and .446 from deep) while increasing his 3-pointers from 2.3 to 3.4 and his steals from 0.8 to 1.2 per game. Fantasy managers eventually got the guy they were hoping to see on draft day, though not everyone could survive his poor first half and reap the benefits of Garland’s return to form.

John Collins

PF, Los Angeles Clippers

ADP: 93.0 / 100.1 (Yahoo/ESPN) | Total Value: 91/85 (8/9-cat) | Per-Game Value: 129/115 (8/9-cat)

Collins ended up with a 12-team season but it wasn’t an enjoyable trip for the most part. While Collins provided top-50 value last year with the Jazz, it came in just 40 games as he was shut down early by a tanking team. There was hope for more balance between his upside and availability this year, which is basically what we got in a roundabout way. He got off to a very slow start, pumping out enough mediocre lines in limited action that Collins ended up getting dropped — understandably — in quite a few leagues. Through 20 games Collins was averaging 12.0 points, 4.9 rebounds, 0.7 steals, 0.7 blocks and 0.9 3-pointers on .508 shooting in 26.9 mpg, opening the season as a bench player and failing to change the narrative when he did get a chance to start. It was okay but nothing worth writing home about unless your team was built on a strong FG%, and even then Collins wasn’t doing much volume-wise.

The switch was then flipped as Collins was a top-50 guy from December through the All-Star break thanks to subtle increases across the board: 15.0 points, 5.3 rebounds, 0.9 steals, 0.8 blocks and 1.7 3-pointers on a cool .600 shooting in 28.5 mpg. That’s something to write home about and more than a few lucky managers were able to add Collins right away for all of that good stuff without putting up with the so-so production of the first 20 games. The question then became whether or not Collins could maintain that pace as the Clippers around him got healthier and the roster got deeper, and the answer was “not really.” Some of the slowdown can be attributed to a neck injury that cost him some time and Collins ended up posting 12.4 points, 5.8 rebounds, 1.1 steals, 0.6 blocks and 1.1 triples on .503 shooting in 25.0 mpg over his last 18 games of the year. Managers who stayed on for the whole ride got a huge peak in the middle but Collins bookended that with two long runs of play that were hardly must-hold in standard formats.

Bradley Beal

SG, Los Angeles Clippers

ADP: 102.3 / 133.5 (Yahoo/ESPN) | Total Value: 524/545 (8/9-cat) | Per-Game Value: 465/529 (8/9-cat)

This is just a sneak peek of the Season Wrap. The entire roster is covered, as well as the Fantasy Star, Letdown, One to Watch and One Burning Question for this team. You’ll need to have an Ethos 360, All-Sport or NBA FantasyPass membership. Click here to learn more and sign up! Premium Access Required Error: Cannot find Yanic Konan Niederhauser in player database

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Mike Passador

Mike graduated from Boston University’s Dual Degree Program with a BA in Economics and a BS in Business with Concentrations in Marketing and Operations Management. He is a faithful supporter of Toronto sports and the Detroit Lions and is always ready to be let down. Tweet to him @Mike_Pandador, but if you badmouth Jose Calderon you might get blocked.

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