Reports have been out that the Clippers are a team to watch in the upcoming Peyton Watson sweepstakes, with Marc Stein and Jake Fischer recently confirming their pursuit. That seems even more likely after Tuesday’s blockbuster trade in which the Clippers are sending Kawhi Leonard back to Toronto in exchange for Brandon Ingram, Gradey Dick, 2 first-round picks, a pick swap, and a second-round pick.
This deal was rumored, but now it’s confirmed that the Clippers are turning over a new leaf, moving on from the Leonard/Paul George/James Harden era completely, and building around the 5th overall pick, Keaton Wagler, Darius Garland, and perhaps… Watson.
The Clippers now have two young guards and a promising young center in Yanic Konan Neiderhauser. Watson makes perfect sense as their rangy young two-way wing. They’ve got some things to work out with their own free agents like John Collins and Bennedict Mathurin, but according to Keith Smith of Spotrac, LA could create over $31 million in cap space this summer.
They could easily make an offer to Watson in the $30 million a year range that makes life extremely difficult and uncomfortable for the Nuggets. They’ll have the right to match, but that’s a lot of money for a guy who may never make an All-Star game and will likely be the third or fourth option in Denver.
Clippers can offer Watson $30m+ in free agency
That kind of deal would also make it much harder for the Nuggets to free up the money to match the deal and keep him without going over the second apron. As it stands, they’ll likely have to salary dump Cameron Johnson or Christian Braun, and depending on how much money they bring back in that deal, they may have even more work to do.
And that’s just to offer Watson a fair-market deal. If a team like the Clippers, Lakers (who are also known to have interest and just lost a long-time starting forward in LeBron James), the Nets, or the Bulls (the other two current teams with cap space) come in and make a big offer for Watson, it could ruin all of Denver’s plans.
That would be particularly agonizing because the Nuggets have unnecessarily telegraphed these plans all along. They couldn’t have made it clearer that they aim to shed money and re-sign Watson. The whole league knows it, and now they can act accordingly, with Denver having zero leverage.
This has the potential to end disastrously, and whether it does or not, the team has played with fire for no reason. Hopefully, other teams back off and they are able to keep P-Wat on a reasonable deal, but that’s looking less likely by the day.
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