The Insane Hype of the 2019-20 NBA Season

A few days later, Adam Silver and the NBA dropped the hammer on Steve Ballmer and his Los Angeles Clippers. After a year-long investigation into potential salary cap circumvention first reported by Pablo Torre, the league and the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz found the Clippers guilty and took away five first-round picks, suspended Ballmer and Clippers' executive Gillian Zucker for one year, and suspended team president Lawrence Frank for six months, and issued a $30 million fine for actions related to circumventing the salary cap and for their actions in the situation.

Of course, this is major news, but this article is not really about that situation itself. Instead, the verdict and everything surrounding it got me thinking about something else… Just how bad the Clippers' decision to acquire Kawhi Leonard and Paul George back in 2019 ended up being and the insane hype that not just the Clippers had going into that season, but the league in general.

Looking back years later, it's difficult to argue that the Kawhi & PG13 era was anything other than a disaster for the franchise.

If you include the five first-round picks that were recently taken away, along with the massive package of draft capital that they sent to Oklahoma City to acquire Paul George and secure Kawhi Leonard's services, the Clippers effectively gave up 10 first-round picks, two pick swaps, and worst of all, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

SGA since the trade has gone on to become one of the greatest guards in the NBA, a two-time MVP who has already brought a championship to Oklahoma City.

And what did the Clippers get in return?

In 7 years, they got three playoff series wins and one trip to the Western Conference Finals, a series in which Leonard did not even play.

Just an absolutely brutal transaction.

All that said, I do understand why people will defend the move. At the time, it made sense. That is what makes this situation so interesting. To truly understand how badly things went for the Clippers, you have to remember just how insane the hype surrounding the 2019 NBA offseason and the 2019-20 season really was.

People often debate which NBA offseason was the greatest in league history. Was it 2010 when LeBron went to the Heat to form the big 3? 2017 when we saw George get traded to OKC in the first place and Kyrie Irving was sent to the Celtics after he requested a trade out of Cleveland? Was it this past offseason with all the player movement we saw? Well, the summer of 2019 is still at the top.

We were coming off the Toronto Raptors winning an NBA championship, something I genuinely never thought I would see. At the same time, the NBA was beginning to move away from the era of superteams. We had spent nearly more than a decade watching dominant Big Threes (or, in the Warriors' case, a Big Four), and people were starting to get tired of the same teams controlling the league every season.

That's what made the summer of 2019 different in the NBA.

That summer, teams across the league appeared to be moving toward a more balanced, duo-centric model. Instead of one team collecting three or four superstar players, teams were beginning to build around two elite stars while surrounding them with depth.

In many ways, that is still the "model" we see across the NBA today. Although the introduction of the second apron and the new restrictive financial rules have made it much harder to keep expensive star duos together for long periods of time.

But in 2019, this was new, and it felt like almost every major contender had their own superstar pairing.

The movement started with the Los Angeles Lakers trading for Anthony Davis to pair him with LeBron James. Then Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving joined the Brooklyn Nets. Even though Durant was set to miss the entire season after tearing his Achilles in the NBA Finals, the idea of eventually seeing those two superstars together was still incredibly exciting.

The Golden State Warriors were also still looming in the background. There was a belief that if they could remain competitive and eventually get their core healthy again, we could potentially see another version of the Warriors dynasty return. Which it did when they won the title in 2022.

The Boston Celtics had Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown starting to turn into legitimate stars. The Toronto Raptors were trying to prove that they could remain competitive with Pascal Siakam and Kyle Lowry even with Leonard's departure. Personally, I expected the Raptors to remain a good team, although I definitely did not expect them to be as successful as they ultimately were when they finished as the second seed in the East.

Meanwhile, the Houston Rockets had paired Russell Westbrook with James Harden, creating another fascinating superstar combination.

In Denver, Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic were also beginning to establish themselves as one of the NBA's best young duos. Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert were leading Utah. Luka Dončić was entering just his second season, while the Dallas Mavericks had recently added Kristaps Porziņģis.

We even had one of the most hyped rookie classes I can remember entering the league that season, headlined by the arrival of Zion Williamson and Ja Morant to the league.

I don't think people fully remember how many exciting star combinations existed across the league.

And then, of course, there were the Clippers.

While it's funny to laugh now, Kawhi Leonard and Paul George instantly became one of the most feared duos in the league and they had the Clippers regarded as the championship favourites heading into that season.

That was what made the 2019-20 season so much fun.

Going into that year, we genuinely had no idea who was going to win the NBA championship.

It might seem obvious in hindsight that the Lakers were going to be one of the best teams, especially considering they ultimately won the title, but at the time, the championship race felt completely open. The Lakers and Clippers were the heavy favourites, but there were legitimate arguments for so many other teams across the league.

Everyone believed that if their team had the right superstar duo, they had a chance.

I honestly do not think the league has been in a better place from an offseason excitement standpoint since then. For me, the 2019 offseason was the last truly prime era of NBA offseason hype before the current era.

That is not to say recent offseasons have been boring because the NBA is entering another fascinating period right now. There is plenty of excitement surrounding how LeBron James will perform in Philadelphia alongside Jaylen Brown, what the Boston Celtics will look like without Brown, and, in one of the most ironic twists you could think of, Kawhi Leonard now finding himself back with the Raptors.

So much has changed since 2019.

The NBA's financial rules have changed the way front offices build rosters, which has forced teams to act differently, which maybe explains why the Clippers did what they did.

But the Clippers' decision to go all-in on Kawhi Leonard and Paul George went from being one of the most exciting moves in NBA history to no doubt being remembered as one of the worst moves a team has ever made.

At the time, giving up everything for Kawhi and Paul George was defendable. Leonard was coming off one of the greatest championship runs in recent history, Paul George was an elite superstar, the league had suddenly become wide open, and the Clippers had a real shot to take over Los Angeles from the Lakers.

Instead, injuries, playoff disappointments, missed opportunities, and now the fallout from the league's recent punishment has completely changed the way we look at the entire era of Clippers basketball.

When you add up the draft picks and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's emergence into one of the best players to ever play the game, and the lack of playoff success the Clippers had, everything that went into qualifying Leonard and George's looks worse with every passing year.

And yet, that is what makes it such a perfect example of how quickly the NBA can change. In the summer of 2019, the Clippers were one of the biggest winners in basketball.

Today, it is fair to ask whether they were actually responsible for one of the worst transactions in NBA history.