You can pinpoint the date the Los Angeles Clippers dragged themselves out of the muck and started their ascension towards becoming a legitimate NBA caliber team: Wednesday June 27, 2001. That was the day Jerry Krause traded Elton Brand to the Clips for the rights to Tyson Chandler and Brian Skinner. Basically Elton Brand for nothing.

Chandler’s worth talking about for a couple of reasons: he’s shooting 35.9% from the free throw line this year, and he’s averaging 4.4 points. Not bad for a former #2 overall pick (even if that was #2 behind Kwame Brown).

At 7′1 Chandler is still posting decent rebound totals (7.2/game). That’s still down from a career average of 7.3, and, sorry, but 4.4 points just isn’t going to get it done. He only really makes sense if you start talking about how bad is. Tony Battie is doubling Chandler’s scoring totals while playing behind Dwight Howard. It’s a coin-toss between which C you’d rather have on your team: Chandler, or Adonal Foyle.

In 5 NBA seasons Chandler has never averaged more than 9.2 points/game. He’s never hit more than 67% of his free throws, and his career high in assists is 75. If he doesn’t pass, and he doesn’t shoot, and he doesn’t block shots (a pathetic 1 per game), then what exactly does he do? Apparently, not a damn thing.

You might want to draw a parallel between Chandler and other former high-school players who took a while to develop their NBA game. Jermaine O’Neal needed 5 seasons before he averaged his first double/double in ‘00/’01. But he wasn’t playing any minutes. O’Neal averaged 12 minutes/game in ‘99/’00 before getting bumped to 32 in ‘00/’01. Tyson’s been playing 20+ minutes since coming into the league. Let’s face it: he hasn’t developed, and he probably never will.

Kwame, Tyson, and Eddy Curry are the reason the NBA doesn’t want high-schoolers crowding the draft anymore. These are guys who warranted huge money when they were picked, and have contributed absolutely nothing at the NBA level while virtually ruining the teams that drafted them. Chandler’s signed through ‘10 at 6 years/$64 million; Kwame Brown through ‘08 at 3 years/$25 million.