As recently as the 2018-19 NBA campaign, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Kawhi Leonard and Paul George all finished top 10 in MVP voting. Westbrook, Harden and Leonard actually placed 1-2-3 in 2017, respectively, and George took third two years later. They are now teammates on the Los Angeles Clippers.
trading a handful of draft picks and another filled with expiring contracts to the Philadelphia 76ers for Harden
Of course, the one season he did finish in that span outside of a bizarre bubble experience, Leonard led the Toronto Raptors to the 2019 NBA championship, capturing a second Finals MVP award. To mix metaphors, that is the stick, dangling the carrot , upon which this entire extremely expensive experiment is built. The four future Hall of Famers will cost Ballmer $130 million in salary this season and about the same in taxes.
Even if Leonard can keep his legs beneath him and Harden can work against his heliocentric type-casting, the Clippers are also leaning heavily on George and Westbrook to make this work. Like Leonard, George has played no more than 54 games in a season for four years running. And like Harden, Westbrook's high-usage brand of basketball has all too often undermined his team's ability to compete for a championship.
Leonard and George have played together for four seasons in Los Angeles and finished just one of them both healthy, blowing a 3-1 series lead in the second round of the 2020 playoffs inside the bubble. George and Westbrook played two seasons together on the Oklahoma City Thunder and never won a playoff series. Westbrook and Harden played one season together in Houston and both left wanting to play elsewhere.
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