While the biggest question surrounding the Los Angeles Clippers ahead of the offseason is the Kawhi Leonard situation, other important roster questions also need an answer. Near the top of that list is Bennedict Mathurin.
The 23-year-old shooting guard is hitting restricted free agency this summer. The Clippers have multiple options: give him a long-term extension, wait until he gets an offer sheet and match it, have him play on his one-year qualifying offer worth $8.8 million, or let him sign elsewhere.
There are valid arguments for every one of these options, yet plenty of talking heads on social media seem to believe that the Clippers have no choice but to keep Mathurin in LA long-term.
Over the weekend, social media was abuzz with head-scratching Mathurin takes. Legion Hoops on X said Mathurin was “money for them,” so the Clippers “need to pay whatever it takes to keep him”. Clippers Nation compared Mathurin to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and said, “The Clippers already made this mistake once. They traded SGA before his breakout. He became an MVP and champion… Same situation. Same risk.” Newsweek published an article with the same idea, “The Clippers Can’t Afford Another SGA Mistake With Bennedict Mathurin.”
First, “paying whatever it takes” to keep your team’s sixth man is exactly how teams find themselves in a financial bind. In a salary cap league, you simply can’t pay any non-superstar “whatever it takes.” Let alone one that had a two-month up-and-down tenure with your team before an early postseason exit.
More importantly, let’s stop the “Mathurin=SGA” nonsense. Gilgeous-Alexander had shown significantly more in his rookie season with the Clippers than Mathurin has ever done in his four-year career. SGA took his game to another level in the playoffs, started every game, and scored very efficiently while playing high-level defense.
Even with SGA showing more than Mathurin early in his career, clearly, no one saw an MVP-type of upside from him. So, suggesting that Mathurin could follow a similar path is disrespectful not only to both players but also to the intelligence of basketball fans.
And the only reason he was traded was so that the Clippers could land both Kawhi Leonard and Paul George. At the time, this move was widely praised as it brought the Clippers to championship-favorite status. There is no need to rewrite history just because the gamble didn’t work.
Mathurin can be a polarizing player. He can certainly score. He is athletic, can get to the rim, and is very skilled at getting to the free-throw line. Yet, there is a reason why he was coming off the bench for the Indiana Pacers, and why they let him go when it was time for a contract extension. Everything else in his game outside of scoring needs to get better, and there has been frustratingly little improvement over the last four years.
Score-first players who can put up points in a pinch tend to get overrated. We recently saw the perfect example of this with Cam Thomas. Despite being a 20+ point scorer, he was waived by the Nets and the Bucks in a span of less than two months.
If you don’t play defense, make plays for your teammates, and thrive as an off-ball player, scoring alone can only get you so far. Especially when you don’t score particularly efficiently. In his four years in the NBA, Mathurin has scored at or below league-average True Shooting%. Considering that he has more turnovers than assists in his career and is a 33.6% three-point shooter, it’s hard to describe Mathurin as anything more than a microwave scorer off the bench.
Mathurin is still young and has some upside. So, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for the Clippers to keep him around. Treating him as a must-keep future star, however, is absolutely ridiculous.
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