The 2025-26 NBA season is here! We’re rolling out our previews — examining the biggest questions, best- and worst-case scenarios, and win projections for all 30 franchises — from the still-rebuilding teams to the true title contenders.
2024-25 finish
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Record: 50-32 (fifth in the West, lost to the Nuggets in the first round of the playoffs)
Offseason moves
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Additions: Chris Paul, Bradley Beal, Brook Lopez, John Collins, Yanic Konan Niederhäuser, Kobe Sanders
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Subtractions: Norman Powell, Amir Coffey, Ben Simmons, Drew Eubanks, Patty Mills, Seth Lundy
All eyes are on Kawhi Leonard and the Clippers. (Stefan Milic/Yahoo Sports Illustration)
The Big Question: Is this the right kind of depth?
OK, let’s get this out of the way: That isn’t really the biggest question surrounding the Clippers right now.
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The biggest questions all revolve around Kawhi Leonard: on what the NBA’s investigation into reporting about the possibility that the team circumvented the league’s salary cap by setting the superstar forward up with a “no-show job” that would effectively pay him up to $48 million off the books will turn up; on what impact, if any, that ongoing investigation might have on the off-court atmosphere around the team, or on the on-court performance of Leonard or his teammates, throughout this season; on what punishment, if any, the league might levy against the Clippers organization and its personnel, all the way up to owner Steve Ballmer; and on how any sanctions might affect the long-term outlook of a franchise desperate for championship contention after advancing past the second round of the playoffs just once since its inception in 1970.
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I know that; you know that; dogs know that. But since none of us have any answers to any of them right now, and since we’ve all devoted plenty of hours (and will surely devote plenty more) to the latest twists and turns in the Aspiration saga, let’s spare a minute or two for what this Clippers team might actually look like on the basketball court this season … because it might be pretty good?
The Clippers just won 50 games despite Leonard making just 37 appearances. While projecting Leonard’s availability is obviously a fool’s errand at this point, it’s worth noting that, amid all the chaos, he actually entered training camp healthy and is playing in the preseason — a far cry from 2024-25, when he didn’t make his debut until after New Year’s Day. At the risk of playing Captain Obvious here, Kawhi being on the floor is a very good thing for Tyronn Lue’s club; when he did play last season, the Clips won at a 58-win pace, and had the point differential of a 66-win team when he was on the floor.
While getting Leonard healthy and available for the full season is the biggest move the Clippers could make, they also spent the summer adding pieces around the edges. Bidding farewell to Norman Powell after a career year hurts, but effectively plugging two players into his salary slot — Bradley Beal, in search of redemption after a disastrous sojourn in Phoenix, and John Collins, in search of games that actually matter after two years in the parallel noncompetitive universe that is Utah — ought to help.
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Beal (17 points per game on 50/39/80 shooting splits) and Collins (19 on 53/40/85) add some offensive spice, variety and versatility to a squad that finished in the middle of the pack in points scored per possession for the full season, but that ranked seventh after Leonard’s debut in early January. It remains to be seen who will start alongside Leonard, Beal, James Harden and Ivica Zubac come opening night; if nothing else, Lue has plenty of options.
Stretch-5 Brook Lopez, too, brings a dose of floor-spacing prowess and a prospective pick-and-pop partner for ball-screen maestros like Harden and prodigal son Chris Paul, who was still really damn good last season next to Victor Wembanyama in San Antonio. Perhaps even more important, though, Lopez could help keep Lue’s coverages organized when All-Defensive Team center Zubac hits the bench.
Last season, the Clips gave up 6.9 more points per 100 possessions without the Croatian big man patrolling the paint, according to Cleaning the Glass — the difference between preventing points at an elite level and a below-average rate. The former Bucks big man might not be quite as excellent an interior deterrent as he was earlier in his tenure in Milwaukee, but he could be devastatingly effective in a more limited role behind Zubac … and, in certain matchups, maybe even alongside him. (Pardon me while I daydream about kaiju battles between Zu-Brook and Şengün-Adams, Jokić-Valančiūnas and Hartenstein-Chet.)
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Add those newcomers to holdovers like Nicolas Batum, Kris Dunn, Derrick Jones Jr. and (the currently injured) Bogdan Bogdanović, and you’ve got a rotation that can go a legit 11 deep … which, as we learned over the course of the runs that the Thunder and Pacers made to the 2025 NBA Finals, is a recipe for being able to survive the intense, grueling pressure of the modern postseason.
There is, of course, a glaring, gigantic difference between the team L.A. has put together and the ones that OKC and Indiana rode to June. Yes, this roster is old — like, historically old, as Tom Haberstroh and I detailed on “The Big Number”:
And old teams typically don’t fare all that well come the end of the marathon NBA season, as Jared Dubin detailed at Last Night in Basketball:
The last over-30 team to win the title was the 2013 Heat. All but one title team since then has had a minutes-weighted age below 29. Notably, the lone exception was the 2020 Lakers, who won the title in the NBA bubble — under far different circumstances than most title teams. (They didn’t have to travel during the playoffs, which seems like a particularly big thing.) An over-30 team hasn’t been to the Finals at all since 2018, which was the last season that LeBron’s Cavaliers teams dominated the Eastern Conference. […]
In the last decade, 10 of the 40 conference-finalists have had a minutes-weighted age of 26 or younger and just one (those 2018 Cavs) has had a minutes-weighted age over 30. In the last five years, only four teams with a minutes-weighted age over 28 have made it as far as the conference finals. Most conference-finalists and title winners still fall in the general prime age range of 26-29 years old, but things are definitely skewing a lot younger than they used to. And when you’re talking about a team with title aspirations, it feels like that matters.
[Get more Clippers news: Los Angeles team feed]
(For the record: Jared wrote that last line before all the Aspiration stuff broke. Sometimes, the universe just turns up a happy accident, y’all.)
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If — when — multiple members of the oldest rotation in NBA history suffer some bumps and bruises, it seems like a lot to ask end-of-the-bench youngsters like Kobe Brown, Cam Christie, Jordan Miller and No. 30 pick Yanic Konan Niederhäuser to offer any respite. The Clippers’ chances of rising above the fray in a brutal West rest with how well Lue can manage the minutes of his veteran group, and if he’ll be able to keep enough of the right plates spinning late into April and May to keep the whole thing from coming crashing down before June once again.
Best-case scenario
An utterly unfazed and unbothered Kawhi plays 70 games for the first time since San Antonio at an All-NBA First Team level, allowing everybody else to fit comfortably into their complementary roles. Harden remains one of the game’s premier orchestrators, and Paul ably serves as an understudy in his absence. Beal bounces back, Collins seizes the opportunity, everybody else stars in their role, and Lue pulls all the right levers. The Clippers win 55 games, finish with a top-two seed in the West and home-court advantage in Round 1 … and a healthy Kawhi leads them back to the Western Conference finals.
If everything falls apart
Kawhi gets hurt, and Beal thinks the cure for what ails the Clipper offense is more Beal. (It isn’t.) Old guys do what old guys do: namely, miss time, and lots of it. Lue’s press conferences start carrying a considerable amount of existential dread, as he tries without success to describe the frustration and hopelessness of coaching a roster that is just never going to have all the pieces there. The defense splinters, the offense sputters and the Clips miss the playoffs …
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… at which point the NBA announces the results of its investigation. Which, since they’re coming in this section, are really, really bad.
2025-26 schedule
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Season opener: Oct. 22 at Utah
Ty Lue won 50 with Kawhi missing more than half the season, and this team is better. I’ll take the over.
More season previews
East: Atlanta Hawks • Boston Celtics • Brooklyn Nets • Charlotte Hornets • Chicago Bulls • Cleveland Cavaliers • Detroit Pistons • Indiana Pacers • Miami Heat • Milwaukee Bucks • New York Knicks • Orlando Magic • Philadelphia 76ers • Toronto Raptors • Washington Wizards
West: Dallas Mavericks • Denver Nuggets • Golden State Warriors • Houston Rockets • LA Clippers • Los Angeles Lakers • Memphis Grizzlies • Minnesota Timberwolves • New Orleans Pelicans • Oklahoma City Thunder • Phoenix Suns • Portland Trail Blazers • Sacramento Kings • San Antonio Spurs • Utah Jazz
Read the full article here