Clippers' Trade Deadline Mistake Comes Back to Bite Them in Playoff Race

The Los Angeles Clippers lost a big advantage in the playoff race on Tuesday night when they fell to the Portland Trail Blazers at the Intuit Dome. It was a poor performance from start to finish, with the Clippers getting outplayed on both ends of the floor. However, one glaring weakness was a bigger reason for the loss than anything else.

The lack of center depth and quality hurt the Clippers in a big way. Isaiah Jackson's injury meant that the Clippers had only Brook Lopez as a healthy center in the rotation. Lopez ended up having to play 36 minutes, and the Clippers played John Collins at five the rest of the way. To nobody's surprise, the Clippers were destroyed on the boards and on the interior against one of the best offensive-rebounding teams in the league.

The Blazers had a whopping 45% offensive rebounding rate, grabbing 18 offensive boards, while the Clippers only had 22 defensive rebounds in the game. Kris Murray, Toumani Camara, and Donovan Clingan exploited the Clippers' weakness on the interior, leading Portland to 32 second-chance points in the game.

Clippers' Center Woes Highlight Big Trade Deadline Mistake

This highlights an important trade deadline mistake by the Clippers. After LA traded Ivica Zubac to the Indiana Pacers, they got Isaiah Jackson and Bennedict Mathurin back. Going from Zubac to Jackson is a clear but understandable downgrade. The real problem was the Clippers' unwillingness to add more depth at center.

It's important to remember that the Clippers had high hopes for rookie Yanic Konan Niederhauser. Just when the young center was emerging into a solid rotation player, he suffered a season-ending Lisfranc injury. This left Jackson and Lopez as the only centers on the roster. Not only can Jackson only play limited minutes, but he also suffered an ankle injury that kept him out of the last two games.

As a result, the Clippers had to rely heavily on Lopez. The 38-year-old center was playing less than 20 minutes per game before the All-Star break. Since then, his minutes increased to 27.4 per game. He has been fine in an increased role, but he poses a challenge due to his lack of versatility.

The veteran center is slow-footed and struggles to stay in front of perimeter players at this stage of his career. He has to play drop coverage, forcing the Clippers to give up a ton of off-the-dribble threes and open midrangers. Offensively, he almost exclusively takes threes and is not a difference-maker inside the arc. On top of it all, he is a very poor rebounder for his size.

Once Zubac was gone, it was clear that the Lopez-Niederhauser-Jackson group was not good enough for a team with playoff aspirations. The Clippers were one injury away from disaster, and when that came in the form of Niederhauser's unfortunate injury, LA's center rotation took a serious hit.

It's not like the Clippers didn't have the resources to upgrade at center. They got two first-round picks back in the Zubac trade, a second-round pick in the Darius Garland deal, and had multiple draft selections that they could have traded of their own. They also had Bogdan Bogdanovic's $16 million expiring salary as a trade asset. Instead, they decided to keep the veteran shooting guard around as a very expensive benchwarmer.

The Clippers can still make some noise in the postseason. With Kawhi Leonard and Darius Garland, they have enough talent. One has to wonder, however, if they lowered their playoff ceiling significantly by not adding another center at the deadline.