The Impossible Happened: TJ Jefferson Is No Longer a Los Angeles Clippers Fan! I The Rich Eisen Show

TJ Jefferson gave up the Clippers on the air, and he did it with a lawyer standing by.

The lawyer was Turzo in Iowa, who called in between depositions having heard TJ might be getting a divorce and wanting to make sure the client was making the right decision. Rich established the terms immediately. Pro bono. Turzo would not have had it any other way.

Turzo's counsel was not what you would expect from a man being asked to help end a relationship. He argued for the defense. Remember why you became a Clippers fan in the first place, he told TJ, and consider that the Sixers may not always be what they are right now. If Philadelphia falls short and reverts, you are going to feel the shape of the thing the Clippers used to fill.

TJ heard him out and then declined the representation. "No due respect, no legal advice needed."

What followed was not a rant. It was a closing argument he had clearly been writing in his head for a while, and it started with a date. September 11, 1999, the day he moved to Los Angeles, arriving as a lifelong Sixers fan who could not watch the Sixers. There was no streaming. If he wanted basketball, and basketball is his favorite game, he needed a West Coast team.

The Lakers were available and he refused them, which is the decision the entire story turns on. It was not about the roster. He loved Shaquille O'Neal. He loved Kobe Bryant. He loved Ron Harper and Rick Fox. It was about how it would look. "I didn't want people to look at me as a bandwagon jumper." So he took a chance on the little brothers.

He got some real years out of it. Elton Brand and Corey Maggette, Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles. Then Lob City, which was genuinely awesome. Then Blake Griffin got shipped off, which was not. Then Kawhi Leonard arrived along with new ownership, and TJ let himself believe this was the turn. "Maybe this would change everything."

Then came the part that actually costs something, and TJ did the math out loud without flinching from it. His pride kept him off the Lakers, and the bill for that pride was six championships. "There's six parades I could have been part of, but I'm like, no, I'm going to make a stand here. I'm going to stand for something."

That is what broke, in the end. Not the losing. The standing. "After everything that has just gone down, it's just not worth standing for it anymore, man. It really just isn't."

He was careful to close it with respect rather than bitterness. Twenty six years. Jerseys bought. Games attended. Considerable abuse absorbed. "I loved the Clippers. I spent 26 years giving everything to them."

Then the reason, which is the line that landed hardest in the room. "I got less time ahead of me than I got behind me. I want to have happiness." So he is putting it into LeBron James and the Philadelphia 76ers. "And to the Los Angeles Clippers, I say thank you, but it's time for me to go."

Turzo, hearing all of it, withdrew his objection. "As your legal counsel, I ain't going to stand in your way." His only addition was practical. Sometimes you just have to rip the band-aid off.

TJ then made a point of where his anger is not directed, which is worth noting given how easy the other target would have been. He declined to blame Kawhi Leonard for any of it, framing him as a participant in a much larger game rather than its author. "Most of us realize in this world billionaires are playing a game that the rest of us aren't even supposed to know about." Owners, in his telling, have been doing this for years. "I'm not going to knock Kawhi for winning a game he should never have been a part of, should never have won. Good for him."

The show, being the show, had a document ready. A formal release of fandom, presented to the Los Angeles Clippers for signature. TJ read it and immediately found the problem, because he is not reckless with commitments even when he is ending one.

"Forever is a mighty long time."

He was willing to sign. He was not willing to sign that word. His stated grounds were that people who date in high school and split have been known to find each other again. "Maybe 10 years from now we'll be on a dating app, we'll both swipe right, and maybe we'll come back together."

Rich, who takes the fake notary responsibilities seriously, negotiated. They crossed out forever and replaced it with a question mark. Then Rich, as a Jets fan, filed what he described as an amicus brief in support, and explained the term when TJ asked.

The signature went through. Twenty six years, closed out with a question mark instead of a period.