Clippers bet big on DeAndre Jordan
There’s no way around it: DeAndre Jordan is overpaid now that the Clippers have matched Golden State’s offer sheet for the 23-year-old center and agreed to pay him $43 million over the next four seasons — about $10.75 million per year, not including a trade kicker. Jordan will earn only about $500,000 and $1 million less than Joakim Noah and Al Horford, players who had emerged as All-Stars or borderline All-Stars on good teams before they signed their first big NBA deals. As for the Warriors, folks are understandably confused about what they did here, unless they had a diabolical plan to compromise the Clippers’ future cap space. The Jordan offer sheet cost them the one-time-only amnesty chance, which they used to wipe put Charlie Bell’s $4 million expiring contract and free up space for Jordan — even though they had to know the Clippers would almost certainly match their offer. In related news, Biedrins remains on the books at $9 million per season for the next three years. Golden State had about $11 million in cap space to work with, and the potential to use it in sign-and-trade transactions. But it just spent some $7 million of it on Kwame Brown, a shaky deal we’ll address shortly.

