after watching last nights game... lets pretend for a moment we can see into the future. i was very disturbed by the fans booing EJ at the line and cheering for kobe and such, but I suppose that is the clippers job to win over most of the "fans" of LA gladiator style.  i keep cheering for this team because of my crazy dream that ill watch a banner go up some day.

so anyway lets assume there is no lockout.

lets pretend most of the vets are borderline expendable.  i like a few of them, i think smith, gomes, and cook at their current salaries really aren't bad.  butler seems like he is ok for like league minimum money at best.  and baron is done for.  kaman i dont think we have to trade, but he's probably going to be too expensive to keep.

so lets do this OKC style yes?

next year we'll have a lottery pick.  say we win 29 games again that probalby gives us the 7th or so pick if we dont win.  we draft  tyler honeycutt  or someone around there for our bench.

so we'll still have kaman for next year and given brendan haywood can make $9 million a year to rot on our dallas' bench we might not be able to afford him and extending deandre.  lets say deandre gets marcin gortat level money and we resign him after this year (6 million... seemse reasonble).   

so next season the clippers will have gordon, griffin, aminu, bledsoe, and honeycutt / new rookie and warren on rookie deals.   dj resigned.  we resign smith, we still have foye and gomes and cook.  baron comes into camp 295 pounds and we just give up on him.

so we play out next year,  lets say the team wins 45 games, and gets the 8th seed, takes the okc hornets to 7 games.  lakers are in decline having not won the 2011 championship , phil jackson retires, kobe's finger is arthritic and he's old and shoots and even lower percentage,  bynum is injured half the season and laker clipper games actually have a real home crowd for a change.   jerry buss' son is causing a ruckus with jeanie buss and the lakers are in some turmoil.  magic johnson goes on tnt with kenny and charles to talk about how disappointed he is with the infighting......   blake and ej make their first all star teams.

now its 2012-2013 season.  we give our pick since its a non lottery to okc who we just lost to, to pay for bledsoe's pick.  minnesota is a lottery team , and we get the 5th pick.   we draft some big man,  to backup dj or something who knows.  maybe we sign a journey man veteran backup as well. 

we either let kaman walk (he wants 10 million per, and mark cuban wants to pay him that so he can unite team germany) or trade him for vets / picks.   baron is now an expiring deal and has been rotting on our bench for a while.  he's dressed very nicely and wins an emmy for his AAU movie.  he retires to be a movie producer, we buy him out / etc.

at this point we've extended eric gordon , at 6 years 80 million or something.  he's an all star and we had money since we let kaman walk.  aminu , griffin and bledsoe are still on rookie deals, and we are about to extend griffin.   foye's deal is off the books after that season.  1 more season of gomes who has been decent, but honeycutt and aminu can hold down SF anyway.  

we have tons of cap space, tons of young players,  everyone on rookie deals and 2 all stars.   we sign a few veterans as backups (2 years from now,  a 38 year old steve nash signs to be a winner and hang out with baron).

steve immediately gets injured after jason powell touches him, so not everything is perfect, so we sign chauncey billups to a 2 million a year deal.

clippers win the title in 2014 and my friends are no longer making fun of me in my fantasy league (one that i currently have ej , blake and kaman in).  people on clipsnation are still complaining that VDN is a bad coach and eric gordon is below average because he loses out on the mvp in a tight vote to blake griffin so some things are still the same.  ESPN's clipper index gets many many page hits.

DTS at the championship parade says ,   i made so much money pre-buying clipper chamionship car flags that i then sold to bandwagon fans,  that i am done being cheap and we have decided to pay mike dunleavy sr his salary since i thank him for coaching bad enough to get us blake griffin.