One of the last few remaining NBA free agency mysteries was solved on Wednesday as Bennedict Mathurin will be joining the Pelicans on a two-year, $16 million deal. Mathurin was a restricted free agent, and this new deal with New Orleans includes a player option, so it’s unclear exactly how this will get sorted out, but one thing is for certain: Mathurin is leaving the Clippers and joining the Pelicans.
And that’s good news for the Celtics, because Boston is suddenly extremely invested in the Clippers being a very bad team for the foreseeable future as they control LA’s first-round pick in the 2028 draft (assuming it’s more favorable than the 76ers’ pick).
Mathurin is no superstar, but he’s a good young player that the Clippers picked up when they traded Ivica Zubac to the Pacers before the February trade deadline. And now he’s gone, likely for nothing or very little, and the Clippers are a worse team for it.
The Clippers are unraveling and Boston stands to profit
Assuming the Kawhi Leonard trade eventually goes through, and he’s dealt to the Raptors, LA will have lost James Harden, Kawhi Leonard, and Ivica Zubac within the last few months, and all they’ll have to show for it is Darius Garland, draft picks, and whatever they end up getting from Toronto (Brandon Ingram, Gradey Dick, and draft picks, unless the deal changes).
Now, with Mathurin walking, they are losing yet another talented player from their rotation, and their path to contention is getting murkier by the day. They still have two seasons to go before they surrender that uber-valuable pick to the Celtics, but it’s hard to imagine them turning this roster around that quickly.
This is almost certainly going to be a long rebuild in LA, and that’s exactly what the Celtics were hoping for when they received this pick in the Paul George-Jaylen Brown trade. On paper, the Clippers have one of the worst rosters in the NBA. They want to build around their young core, but even that group looks suspect outside of rookie Keaton Wagler.
Why LA’s painful rebuild gives Boston a premium asset
They’ve recouped some decent draft picks in the Zubac and Leonard trades, but unless they go big-game hunting with those assets on the trade market, they aren’t going to help them turn things around in the next year.
More likely, they are taking their medicine and accepting that it’s going to take a few painful years before they can actually build a winning team the right way. That may be a tough pill to swallow for the Clippers and their fans, but it’s the right move. It’s going to mean conveying some juicy picks to other teams, including the Celtics (hopefully) in 2028 and the Thunder in 2027, but they can’t go back in time and erase their previous poor decisions.
The best thing they can do is start over and focus on the future. And now, that’s a future that won’t even include Bennedict Mathurin, a 24-year-old wing who just averaged 17.6 points and 5.4 rebounds per game last season. The immediate future is looking grim in LA, and that means things are looking very bright in Boston.
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