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A little less than a week ago, free-agent center and former Los Angeles Clipper DeAndre Jordan reportedly agreed to a four-year max deal with the Dallas Mavericks worth more than $80 million.
There’s only one problem.
Free-agent deals can’t be made official until the NBA moratorium is lifted on July 9. Normally this isn’t a problem, but the Clippers aren’t giving up on Jordan. According to ESPN’s Marc Stein, Doc Rivers and Co. are giving one final pitch to big man, who has spent his first seven NBA seasons in Los Angeles:
Clips, I’m told, firmly believe they’ll be bringing DeAndre Jordan back to LA on a plane tonight. This story, mind you, puts the F in fluid
As Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski notes, the meeting is actually in Houston, where Jordan is from, but that’s not stopping the Clippers from bringing out the big guns:
Sources: Doc Rivers, Steve Ballmer, Blake Griffin, Chris Paul, Paul Pierce and JJ Redick are converging on Houston to meet with Jordan.
Jordan will have a face-to-face meeting with the Mavericks before he makes his final decision, but the Clippers appear confident in making him complete the 180.
Neither Jordan nor the Clippers have technically done anything illegal, but as many have pointed out, they are breaking an unwritten rule. If Jordan does flip back to the Clippers, it’s a massive blow to the Mavericks, who lost Tyson Chandler to the Phoenix Suns, had much of their cap space tied up with Jordan and would now be stuck with an extremely thin free-agent market to fill the void.
No matter what happens, you can bet the rivalry between the Mavs and Clippers, who have already engaged in an entertaining Twitter war using strictly emojis, will be taken to a whole new level next season.