Harden Opens Camp Alone at the Top

Brandon Ingram is out. Bradley Beal is out. Jordan Miller is out. The three players the Clippers spent the most offseason energy acquiring or retaining won't be on the floor when training camp opens, which means the team that was supposed to look different this year will start by looking a lot like the one that stumbled to 42–41 last spring.

What that leaves is Harden running the show with Ivica Zubac anchoring the paint, Gradey Dick and the newly arrived wings filling in around them, and a group of role players who are fine but were never meant to carry early-camp chemistry work. The whole point of the reset was to get Harden some relief — other creators, other shot-makers, so he wouldn't have to force the issue the way he did in those final ten games last season, when his efficiency cratered as his usage climbed. None of that help is available right now.

The Ingram situation I noted last week is the sharpest edge of it — he was the centerpiece of the Kawhi trade, and he's already watching from the sideline. But Beal and Miller being out too means the Clippers are essentially running a skeleton crew through the early weeks of camp. Zubac, Kris Dunn, and whoever's healthy among the new wings will get a lot of reps together before the roster is actually whole.

None of this is fatal. Injuries at camp happen, and there's time before the regular season begins. But for a franchise already managing five stripped draft picks, an interim governor, an interim president of basketball ops, and a federal investigation, adding "our top three offseason pieces are unavailable" to the list is not nothing.