As projected former OKC Thunder forward Patrick Patterson will join Clippers

Despite his earlier protestations to the contrary former OKC Thunder forward, Patrick Patterson will indeed join the LA Clippers now that he’s cleared waivers.

OKC Thunder General Manager is having one heck of a busy offseason. Granted, the objective the GM started the summer with quickly changed thanks to Paul George. The star’s trade demand, gave Presti all of 48 hours to get the deal done and only one possible trade destination.

To say Presti was working with one hand tied behind his back would be a fair assessment. The fact he pulled off arguably a better haul for PG than the Pelicans got for Anthony Davis is a testament to how quickly Presti adapted on the fly.

That one trade sparked the next two moves resulting in Jerami Grant moving to the Denver Nuggets and franchise superstar Russell Westbrook to the Houston Rockets. In less than a week, the OKC Thunder went from focusing on bringing back a team with constancy and stars to compete for a title to a likely lottery bound squad.

Given those dynamics, it wasn’t surprising the Thunder elected to buyout power forward Patrick Patterson. After two seasons of regression and sub-par performances, the OKC brain trust elected to move on from Patterson.

The hope was when PPat arrived he would be bringing floor spacing and quality defense as a starter. That never transpired for a variety of reasons. The first season Carmelo Anthony was a late offseason addition removing the option of starting Patterson.

This past season Jerami Grant beat out Patterson for the starting role and proved to be a younger, better version of what the team had hoped Patrick would be. Although he played in all 82 games with the Thunder in his first season Billy Donovan continually cut his minutes. In 2018-19 he appeared in 63 games playing only 13.7 minutes per game.

He opted into his final contract year with OKC and was slated to receive $5,711,200. The negotiated buyout between Patterson and OKC was substantial enough to put the Thunder below the luxury tax line. Albeit, the team still needed to add another player to meet league requirements. With the recent signing of Justin Patton OKC jumped back above that line.

As noted previously Presti has until Game 82 to get under that line so there’s no rush to move players, however, it is a virtual certainty the Thunder will do so prior to season end to avoid being a repeat offender of being in the luxury.

As per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Clippers will sign Patterson to a one-year, $2.3 million deal. Although it was long suspected this was the nine-year vets desired destination he spoke out on the matter saying he was discussing other destinations as well.

Perhaps that was all in an effort to ensure he solidifies the deal with the Clippers but as per Woj’s tweet above it’s now official.

We suggested the OKC Thunder may want to add Kevin Hervey at the time of Patterson’s buyout. While the team did add Justin Patton it doesn’t preclude the team from adding Hervey.