Last July, the Los Angeles Clippers signed Blake Griffin to a five-year, $173 maximum contract extension after labeling him as a “Clipper for life.”

That thought apparently didn’t last very long.

On January 29, Los Angeles traded Griffin, Brice Johnson and Willie Reed to the Detroit Pistons in exchange for Tobias Harris, Avery Bradley, Boban Marjanovic, a protected 2018 first-round draft pick and a 2019 second-round pick.

The out-of-the-blue deal shocked the entire NBA community, including Griffin, who apparently had no idea what was in the works since he found out about it on Twitter.

According to ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz on Saturday, Clippers owner Steve Ballmer called the decision “very difficult”, but added that injury and chemistry concerns also played a huge role.

"[Griffin] is obviously a superstar player," said Ballmer. "But if you look at what happened injury-wise, if you look at the kind of chemistry we were getting on our team, the thing you can see at the high level with the numbers when I started -- one guy got all the assists, one guy got all the points and one guy got all the rebounds. It's not all quite that way, but I think in the modern NBA, we were seeing it more and more -- there's a greater distribution of responsibility.”

Ballmer continued, ”We have to add some pieces obviously, but I think we're building for what I think is the modern NBA, and that trend has only accelerated since we signed Blake last summer.”

Most of all, the Clippers wanted to avoid tanking and putting their loyal fanbase through yet another complete rebuild.

"I think bottoming out is a dangerous game," the owner said. "If you have to play it, maybe you have to play it. Then again, superstars don't want to go to teams that look like absolute losers. So you really have to make sure [you get] multiple high-level draft picks, and you have to make sure you really hit on high-level draft picks, and you have to be willing to take -- not even the financial consequences. In a way you're being dismissive of your fans by taking that big a step back."

Ballmer also made it very clear that president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank and the front office will have some time to develop and create a championship-contending roster, but winning the franchise’s first title will always be at the forefront of every decision.

"For me, it's a little like assessing a new product developed in tech," Ballmer said. "Maybe it takes four of five years to launch. You better not assess the development team on what it looks like in Year 1½, but if it's Year 7 and you still haven't shipped, or it's Year 5 and you've shipped a piece of crap, you can do a pretty good evaluation. That's how I think about front office.”

Since making the trade, the Clippers have gone 6-3 and, heading into Sunday, they rank in ninth place in the Western Conference. But, the New Orleans Pelicans, Denver Nuggets, Portland Trail Blazers and Oklahoma City Thunder are all within a few games of them.