Doc Rivers claims he threatened to step down from his new job with the Los Angeles Clippers back in 2013 when Donald Sterling vetoed a three-team trade involving J.J. Redick.

Redick was a free agent and he agreed to a four-year, $27 million deal with the Clippers.

“I was on the job for six days and I quit,” Rivers said. “The deal went through and everyone said it was a great deal. I flew back home to Orlando for a couple of days and I got a call from [former Clippers president] Andy Roeser saying Donald Sterling decided he didn’t want to do the deal. I said, ‘What do you mean? The deal is already done. JJ is a free agent. He backed out of a deal to sign with us. If we don’t do this deal we’ll never get another free agent. It’s our word.’”

Rivers thought he had ultimate authority over the Clippers' roster.

“I got on the phone with Donald and he was telling me how great his word was,” Rivers said. … “I was in the airport parking lot screaming, ‘No, no, no, no! You’re not going to do this! This is my reputation!’ He just went on and on about his reputation and how great it was.

“Finally at the end of it I said, ‘If you don’t do the trade, I quit.’ He said, ‘You can’t quit, you signed a five-year deal, I’ll make sure you don’t coach anywhere!’ I said, ‘I’m fine with that. I’ll find a job. I’ll do something, but I’m not going to do this. I gave the guy my word. I shook his hand.”

JaMychal Green passed on more lucrative contract offers from several teams as a free agent and decided to re-sign with the Los Angeles Clippers.

Green started as a floor-stretching center against the Golden State Warriors in the playoffs following his midseason acquisition from the Memphis Grizzlies.

After he agreed to sign with the Clippers, Kawhi Leonard reached out to Green in an attempt to get him to re-sign.

Paul George told Ramona Shelburne of ESPN that he will miss all of training camp and is targeting a 'November-ish' return.

George had surgery on both shoulders over the summer.

In looking ahead at the season, George added that the Clippers could be a "special defensive team" with several players committed to the defensive end. 

Kawhi Leonard became the latest superstar to signal his intent to play for Team USA in the 2020 Olympics.

"Yeah, I do wanna play. I'm taking it one step at a time. Right now it's getting the Clippers to the Finals," said Leonard during Clippers media day. 

James Harden, Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Damian Lillard all said they were interested in joining Team USA next summer. 

Joakim Noah is not expected to workout with the Los Angeles Clippers, league sources told Andrew Greif of the Los Angeles Times.

Noah was initially scheduled for a workout this week.

The Clippers will go into training camp with one open roster spot. 

Ryan West will scout prospects at the college and NBA level for the Los Angeles Clippers on a contractual basis, league sources told Andrew Greif of the Los Angeles Times.

West was most recently the director of player personnel for the Lakers, having spent a decade with the team.

His father, Jerry, has worked as a consultant for the Clippers since 2017. 

Joakim Noah will join the Los Angeles Clippers for workouts this week.

The Los Angeles Lakers considered signing Noah before eventually agreeing to terms with Dwight Howard.

Noah played for the Memphis Grizzlies last season.

Kawhi Leonard spoke to Paul George about potentially joining him with the Los Angeles Clippers prior to the start of free agency, according to Adrian Wojnarowski.

“The idea that Kawhi Leonard first introduced the idea of trading for Paul George in his meeting with the Clippers, from a list, we know that days before free agency started, well days before, Kawhi and Paul George were talking. Paul George’s agent went to Oklahoma City prior to the start of free agency and said Paul would like to be traded to the Clippers. He wants to play with Kawhi. But, at that point, Kawhi wasn’t allowed to be talking with the Clippers. They couldn’t officially have contact with him until after June 30, 6 p.m," said Wojnarowski on his latest podcast with Brian Windhorst. 

Wojnarowski's account contrasts Doc Rivers' story that Leonard picked George from a list of players he'd potentially like to play with as part of the Clippers' free agent pitch. 

The league recently passed stricter measures to combat tampering before the start of free agency. 

Doc Rivers revealed the position Kawhi Leonard took during their meeting in Malibu as the Los Angeles Clippers pitched him on their franchise.

Lawrence Frank and Steve Ballmer had planned on pursuing Leonard for more than a year.

“I actually tried to speak to him last season a couple times as he was walking by and you get nothing out of him. Nothing,” Rivers said. “He comes into this meeting and he shakes our hands and he’s talking. We were prepared for a meeting where we would have to drag things out of him. Instead, he’s the one talking and finally he tells us exactly what the deal is.

“He said, ‘I want to play for you,’ and he pointed at me. He said, ‘Mr. Ballmer, I love the things you do and what you stand for, but your team is not good enough and if you don’t change your team, I’m not coming.’ ”

Leonard wanted to sign with the Clippers, but they would have to find a way to acquire a second star.

“We actually had a list of guys, which was a mistake, but we got lucky,” Rivers said. “We shouldn’t have had a list, because then he got to choose who he wanted to play with and the assumption was that we could get them. We didn’t know if we could get anybody. We just showed him guys that we thought would match him and when he saw Paul George’s name he said, ‘I want to play with him.’

“We showed him everybody else and he didn’t want to hear it. He just stayed on Paul George, so after the meeting we sat down and I said, ‘We got to get Paul George. I don’t know how we are going to do it, but we have to do it.’ We did know that Oklahoma City wanted to break their team up, so that helped, but we didn’t know if we could get him.”

The Clippers traded five first round picks plus two pick swaps to the Oklahoma City Thunder for George.

“Steve Ballmer was nervous about the picks,” Rivers said. “I said, ‘Steve, you keep saying six picks for Paul George is insane, but you’re saying it wrong. It’s not six for Paul; it’s six for Paul and Kawhi. So three for each. I would do that.’ You have to look at it in those terms.”

The Thunder initially rejected the trade, leading the Clippers to believe he was set to sign elsewhere.

“The day of the trade at 12 noon the deal was off,” Rivers said. “I was at home in Malibu and Lawrence called me and told me, ‘It looks like he’s either going to Toronto or the Lakers.’ The Lakers part just threw me over. I told him that can’t happen. … I remember I kept telling him, ‘We cannot allow that to happen!’

“I actually told Steve jokingly that if that happens, we’re moving the team to Seattle. It was a joke, but I was actually serious about it. I really believed that.”

The Los Angeles Clippers were known to frequently send members of their staff to watch Kawhi Leonard play during his season with the Toronto Raptors.

Steve Ballmer, Lawrence Frank and other team representatives occasionally made appearances at Scotiabank Arena as well.

“I got a lot of credit, and so did Jerry West, but the guy that was the hero in all this was Lawrence Frank,” Doc Rivers said. “He did all the work. He had Steve Ballmer going to Raptors games and he went to some, too. We were warned that no more Clippers players, coaches or employees could go to games in Toronto. We were sending guys to go sit in the stands. 

“There was nothing wrong with what we were doing, but Steve Ballmer sitting courtside in Toronto seemed a little strange. But we didn’t say a word. We just wanted [Leonard] to know we were there and we were interested.”

The Clippers had been optimistic of their odds of signing Leonard, but the Los Angeles Lakers' ability to pair him with LeBron James and Anthony Davis was an obstacle.

“We had a meeting with Kawhi at my house in Malibu and we felt we had the inside position,” Rivers said. “The Lakers had a meeting with Kawhi and they built this whole thing up for him to come to their new practice facility and he said, ‘No, you can come to my hotel room.’ But with us he said, ‘Yes, I’ll come to your house.’ When we heard that it felt like he was telling us he wants to come here.”

Rivers had never spoken with Leonard before the Clippers' meeting.

“I actually tried to speak to him last season a couple times as he was walking by and you get nothing out of him. Nothing,” Rivers said. “He comes into this meeting and he shakes our hands and he’s talking. We were prepared for a meeting where we would have to drag things out of him. Instead, he’s the one talking and finally he tells us exactly what the deal is.

“He said, ‘I want to play for you,’ and he pointed at me. He said, ‘Mr. Ballmer, I love the things you do and what you stand for, but your team is not good enough and if you don’t change your team, I’m not coming.’ ”