The Los Angeles Clippers have lived through plenty of rough summers, but none quite like this one, with the NBA's investigation ending in five lost first-round picks and suspensions for owner Steve Ballmer and team president Lawrence Frank, while Kawhi Leonard was finally shipped to Toronto in mid-September.
So when the Clippers met the media on Monday, interim president of basketball operations Trent Redden spent his first few minutes talking to the fans who had waited all summer to hear from somebody in charge.
"Their pain through this time is real," Redden said. "The penalties we are facing are significant, and we will comply with them."
Redden also leaned on the team's history, saying the franchise "often has done its best work with its back against the wall," which is easier to say than to prove for a group coming off a 42-40 season that ended with a play-in loss to the Golden State Warriors.
Lue Stands Firm
Ty Lue had every reason to keep his distance from all of it, but he went the other way and spent a good part of his time at the podium talking about what Ballmer has done for him and his family.
"My loyalty to him is to the end," Lue said. "I definitely want to be here. I definitely want to go through this challenge."
He didn't pretend the last few months have been easy on anyone in the building, though he kept coming back to his locker room as the reason he still likes where this group is going.
"It's been difficult," Lue said. "But I give our players a lot of credit. The leadership is great, the morale is great, even in these tough situations."
New Faces and Old Problems
The roster looks very different now, and Darius Garland is the one running the show after he put up 19.9 points and 6.4 assists per game in 19 games with the Clippers last season once the James Harden trade sent him west.
"I think we can surprise a lot of people," Garland said.
It didn't take long for the mood to turn, because Trent Redden revealed that Brandon Ingram has a partially torn Achilles that doctors found during heel surgery in May, which means he will miss most of camp and the start of the season after averaging 21.5 points and 5.6 rebounds as an All-Star in Toronto last year.
"I won't be participating in training camp much, but I will be out there a little bit," Ingram said, while adding that "we have enough in the building to compete."
Bradley Beal is dealing with some knee swelling that showed up while he was working his way back from hip surgery, although he said his hip is "95% there" and the team plans to go slow with him.
Jordan Miller tore his rotator cuff in an offseason workout, and Yanic Konan Niederhauser is still coming back from the foot injury that ended his rookie year.
A lot of that load now falls on Rui Hachimura and Max Strus, along with No. 5 pick Keaton Wagler, a rookie Lue has already hinted will play a real role this season.
"I'm just going to do my best to stay mentally focused," Wagler said. "Not worry about all the outside noise."
Training camp opens Tuesday in Hawaii, where the Clippers will stay through an Oct. 4 preseason game against the Warriors, and the games start counting Oct. 21 when the Sacramento Kings come to Intuit Dome, which is about three weeks for Lue to figure out who is healthy enough to start.