I feel awful for Blake Griffin. If you looked at the fourteen teams that had the opportunity to win the lottery and tried to pick the worst scenario for the Sooner superstar, 99% of fans would have selected the Clippers winning (the other 1% would be bitter Seattle fans). And Murphy's Law being what it is, that is exactly what happened.
Set aside that the Clippers have the worst accumulated winning percentage of any major sports franchise. Forget that they already have a ton of their skinflint owner's money wrapped up in guys who play the same position as Blake. Ignore that this would be the first time "The Beast" has played a home game more than thirty minutes from his parent's house and it would be in the second largest market in the United States.
The real issue is that the Clippers have the most historic string of bad management of all thirty NBA teams, and have no hope of ever changing that. It starts with the ownership, which consists of a single person named Donald Sterling. Sterling has a Donald Trump sized ego wrapped in the exterior of Ebeneezer Scrooge. He owns a sports franchise out of the vanity of wanting to say he owns a sports franchise. Winning is low on his list of priorities, mainly because hiring players who would make the Clippers win would cost more and cut into his profit margin. (This ESPN the Magazine article details the quirkiness of Sterling in depth...including his desire for message therapists who will "you know, let (him) slip it in, or who (will) suck on it.")
Does that mean that the Clippers might be stupid enough to trade the first overall pick to the Thunder? No. But after the jump, I will outline a scenario where it could potentially happen.
For months prior to the lottery, I would have conversations with basketball fans about the Thunder's chances of winning the Blake Griffin sweepstakes. As the season progressed and the wins started piling up for the team, my optimism of winning became bleaker and bleaker, but unfailingly, the other person in the conversation would say: "Maybe they can trade up for him."