Clipper Steve is taking a quick break to hang out with the family and try to restore the cosmic order, although some (like Citizen Jax) would say that the events of early July are simply par for the course in the Clipcosmos. A hearty triumvirate of lesser citizens will try to plug the gap during the absence of our fearless leader. My own assignment, not surprisingly, is to maintain the thin fiber of morale that remains in ClipsNation as we continue the march through the July of our discontent. Not quite ready to open up the doors of Club Optimism just yet, as Eric Gordon joins us already on crutches with a bad hamstring after just two summer league games, proving that he's even more reminiscent of Corey Maggette than we might have guessed.
At any rate, the purpose of this post is twofold: first, we're all waiting around and hearing a bunch of rumors about power forwards and restricted free agents, and at this point it all seems to be a bunch of gibberish. When it gets to where there's a discussion of Chris Wilcox as Mike Dunleavy's stopgap power forward, you know we're getting dizzy from all the spin. It reminds me of our tortured gyrations of last week, and of course CS' put up his "No News is No News" post at 5:18, and we had more news than ClipsNation could handle by 5:30. And so, in an effort to get things going, I'm testing the system to see if the "no news" thing works again--you can check back in 12 minutes.
Secondly, "no news" has a hallowed place in Clipper lore. Sometimes the Clips are much better off when nothing happens. Kandi deciding not to take the extension offer is of course the best example, but there are others. In this case, if the rumors are true, the Knicks decision to turn down the Clips overly generous offer of a 2nd round pick to take on the horrendous contract and play of Zach Randolph seems to me at least to be a great example of "no news."
Something will happen eventually. The best that Club Optimism, doors shut, can muster at the moment is that the Clips will avoid turning the recent debacle into an all-out, longterm train wreck of epic proportions. Chewing up the Clippers' capspace with three years of Zach Randolph seems like it has that potential. Mike Dunleavy has been a stalwart leader of what has become a complicated salvage operation, and he keeps saying that the Clips have lots of money that they're eager to spend, and they have no bad contracts (the Mobley and Thomas deals aren't what you would call good contracts, but they do seem to be getting better as they approach expiration and become bargaining chips). The goal right now is to keep it that way.
But maybe we'll know something... in about 12 minutes.