The LA Clippers begin the 2025-26 NBA regular season with three things that every team needs if they want to be the last team standing in eight months: They’re healthy, they’re talented, and they’re deep.
Yes, the Clippers are old. And yes, their franchise player will have the threat of the Aspiration scandal and the consequences of the league’s investigation at a date to be determined later.
But for right now, when Kawhi Leonard sees his team, it is arguably the best group he has had since he missed the 2021 Western Conference Finals due to his ACL injury.
“Going back to ’21, we had a great playoff push going into that semifinals, I thought we had a real good group of talent,” Leonard said this month when I asked him if this was the most accountable and most focused Clippers training camp that he was a part of. “Unfortunately, that year I tore my ACL in that Utah series. But I think this is probably the most well-rounded team since then. You know, after I came back, it seemed like we were always missing a piece. Either it was a point guard, or a big, or a 4-man. But it feels like overall, we have those spots filled.”
One look at the depth chart for a roster that was completed Saturday, once undrafted rookie Jahmyl Telfort won the final two-way contract shows how complete the Clippers roster is heading into their season opener on the road Wednesday against the Utah Jazz and their home opener Friday against the Phoenix Suns:
Clippers Week 1 depth
Clippers Week 1Point guardShooting guardSmall forwardPower forwardCenter
Starters
James Harden
Bradley Beal
Kawhi Leonard
Derrick Jones Jr.
Ivica Zubac
Rotation
Chris Paul
Kris Dunn
Nicolas Batum
John Collins
Brook Lopez
Backups
Bogdan Bogdanovic
Cam Christie
Kobe Brown
Yanic Konan Niederhauser
Two-way
Kobe Sanders
Jordan Miller
Jahmyl Telfort
Inactive
That is a roster that features 11 players with at least eight years of NBA experience prior to this one: Leonard, James Harden, Ivica Zubac, Bradley Beal, Derrick Jones Jr., Chris Paul, John Collins, Kris Dunn, Brook Lopez, Nicolas Batum, and Bogdan Bogdanović. Of those 11, the only ones that are younger than 30 years old are Jones (29 in February), Zubac (29 in March) and Collins (28).
The seven returning Clippers (Leonard, Harden, Zubac, Jones, Dunn, Batum, Bogdanović) all averaged at least 16 minutes per game in the regular season, while the four new veterans (Beal, Paul, Collins, Lopez) all averaged at least 28 minutes while starting the majority of games last season.
The Clippers can credibly roll out 11 rotation-worthy players when fully healthy, which team is now entering the season. There are multiple scorers, shooters, point of attack defenders, wing defenders and true centers. They even have a real life power forward for once.
Does that mean that the Clippers will have an 11-man rotation? Head coach Tyronn Lue says no.
“We won’t be able to play 11 guys,” Lue said when I asked if it is a fair expectation to play everyone. “That would be too hard. So, we’ll see when Wednesday gets here.”
Fifteen minutes is the floor for rotation minutes as an NBA player. There were 340 players who appeared in at least 20 games and averaged at least 15.0 minutes per game in the NBA last season, an average of about 11 players per 30 teams. There were 253 players who appeared in at least 20 games and averaged at least 20.0 minutes per game in the NBA last season, an average of about 8 players per 30 teams.
Now, every team has an 8-man rotation: a starting lineup plus a bench that has at least one guard, one wing and one big. Teams will often use nine-man rotations to stagger stars to augment bench lineups. At times, teams will use a full five-man lineup off the bench, something the Clippers flashed in the preseason. When Paul, Dunn, Batum, Collins and Lopez played together, they dominated this month.
“CP has been a starter. Brook Lopez a starter. Nico’s been a starter; KD started for us last year,” Lue said after the preseason opener in Oceanside. “John Collins started in Utah. So, you do have five starters in the second unit. So, just how we want to play. If they can hold up offensively and defensively, we’ll see.”
With that said, there is no such thing as a regular 11-man rotation in the NBA. There were only seven instances throughout the league last regular season (out of a possible 2,460) where teams played 11 players at least 15 minutes each, per Stathead. The only time it happened in a game that wasn’t decided by double digits was when the New Orleans Pelicans used 11 players for at least 15 minutes each in a 119-114 loss at Brooklyn in April, a game that featured two teams trying to tank in the last week of the season.
The only team to play an 11-man rotation for 15-plus minutes each more than once were the Jazz, the worst team in the league. They did it twice, a 26-point November loss at Denver and a 16-point March win against the Washington Wizards.
In five previous seasons as the head coach of the Clippers, Lue has used a 10-man rotation with at least 15 minutes for each player only 21 times, less than one instance a month. He used a 10-man rotation only twice all of last season, both in November wins (at home against the Orlando Magic and in a blowout win at Washington).
The one time he played more than 10 players for at least 15 minutes each has a big asterisk: it was a nationally televised blowout loss in Denver in January 2023 on the front end of a back-to-back. With the Clippers down by 34 points at halftime, Lue benched his starting lineup of Leonard, Zubac, Paul George, Marcus Morris Sr. and Reggie Jackson and wound up playing 12 players for 15-plus minutes each.
By contrast, Lue is a nine-man rotation coach. He has used eight or nine players for at least 15-plus minutes each in 317 of his games as Clippers head coach, or 79.3 percent of his games.
“We’ll see how it goes,” Lue said in terms of balancing out who winds up playing on a game-to-game basis.
Looking at lineup data from the regular season last year, it is important to note that teams don’t get nearly as much run from their most-used lineup as most people may think. Only 32 five-man lineups played at least 200 minutes together in the NBA last season; none of them reached 1,000 minutes. Only three five-man lineups appeared together for at least 50 games; two of them were Timberwolves lineups, and none played more than 55 games. Only 47 five-man lineups played at least ten minutes per game together in the NBA last regular season; none averaged 20 minutes per game.
The Clippers actually had one of the five lineups in the league last season that played at least ten games together and averaged at least 15 minutes per game: Harden, Powell, Dunn, Leonard and Zubac (15.9 minutes per game over 18 games). Over the course of a season, a team will have an ideal starting group with a full roster. But teams will need multiple starting lineups, and when injuries hit, a team needs players who can fill in. The Clippers were built with an 82-game season in mind.
That is especially relevant regarding the injury history of Clippers who are expected to start. Leonard has played in more than 60 games once in the last eight seasons, and that one season (2023-24) saw Leonard fail to make it to the postseason or out of the following offseason healthy due to his balky right knee. Beal hasn’t played more than 60 games in any of the past six seasons, and he was the last Clipper to debut this preseason after having his right knee scoped after last season. Lue would not discuss either Leonard nor Beal being available for zero-day rest games, which currently make up 18.3 percent of the Clippers’ schedule.
The Clippers most likely not to be in the rotation when the roster is full appear to be Batum and Bogdanović. Batum, who will be 37 years old in December, is the only one of the eleven veterans who didn’t average 20 minutes per game during the regular season last season. His minutes did go from 17.5 to 24.6 in the postseason. Bogdanović has had to overcome injuries at the start of the offseason, the start of training camp and in the first preseason game. He wasn’t able to be in the second unit that included Batum, Paul, Lopez, Dunn and Collins. The Clippers may want to manage Bogdanović as well; the 33-year-old guard has missed at least 19 games in four of the last five seasons.
The point guard and center positions will also be watched in terms of rest days. The 36-year-old Harden played his most minutes (2,789) in six years and his most games (79) in eight years. His backup, Paul, is 40 years old and will be coming off the bench after starting 82 games for the Spurs last season. Zubac is young (compared to his teammates), but Lue has said repeatedly that Zubac should play less than the career-high 32.8 minutes that he averaged over 80 games last season. Lopez started for the Bucks last season, but like Paul, he can expect a reduced role as a reserve. The 37-year-old Lopez also might not be a matchup for some teams in certain games, as the Clippers may need more perimeter mobility that would put Collins or Batum at center in smaller lineups.
Less likely to be excluded from the rotation are Collins, Jones and Dunn. They may not start every game, but the emphasis on point-of-attack defense should ensure that Jones and Dunn are in the rotation, while Collins will be needed as either a starter or a reserve.
The Clippers have what they need to begin the season in terms of personnel. Now, it’s up to them to get off to a strong start and maintain it.
“It feels good to have so many options and a lot of different combinations,” Lue said. “And every night could be different; every night is gonna be different. But it’s gonna take us 15, 20 games into the season to really understand our rotations, our chemistry, how we wanna play, who fits well together. So, I’m excited about that.”
