After 15 Seasons And One Hell Of A Career Shaun Livingston Is Hanging It Up

So I can’t say this is a total surprise after the Warriors released Livingston earlier this summer where they guaranteed him $2M of a $7.7M contract buyout. He said at the time that he was still interested in playing and even talked about a potential reunion with the Clippers which would have been AWESOME. But with that obviously not working out Livingston has decided to hang up his sneakers for good and I have to say he had one of the more fascinating careers in recent memory. The way we talk about the Clippers now is certainly not how we talked about them during Livingston’s time in LA, they were a laughingstock of the NBA for a long ass time. Well he was part of the team that finally broke through and made the playoffs in 2005 and looked like he was going to be a legit force. His size was unique for a point guard and all signs pointed to him being a beast for years to come

But then he suffered one of the worst knee injuries you’ll ever see and his career was suddenly in jeopardy. That has to be one of the all time “what ifs” in terms of players getting hurt. After that injury in 2007, Livingston became sort of an NBA nomad. He signed with the Heat in 2008 as a free agent only to be traded a few months later in January to the Grizzlies for a 2nd round pick (that they didn’t even end up getting) and was immediately waived on the same day. Brutal. A few months after that he signed on with OKC’s G-League team and eventually made the NBA roster in late March. He was waived by OKC by December. From there he wouldn’t find his way back to an NBA roster until February of 2010 with the Wizards and later that summer signed a free agent deal with the Bobcats. He played 73 games that year for CHA which was the most he’d ever played in any of his NBA seasons. It looked like maybe he had found a home, only to then be traded to MIL the next year. As a Buck he played in 58 games and started 27 so perhaps this was where he’d finally stick around. Nope, he was eventually traded to the Rockets in the summer of 2012 who eventually waived him before the season started. After another stint with the Wizards that lasted a month before they waved him he found his way to CLE where he finished out the season and actually looked pretty good in his 49 games. That led Brooklyn which is where he really started to flourish. After a while he became a starter and proved to be a legit option on the defensive end, and played a career high 76 games. It was really the first time he looked healthy and at just 28 years old suddenly he had a future.

Then, everything changed.

In 2014 Livingston found his way to the Warriors and the rest is history. All of the sudden Livingston became one of the best reserve guards in the entire NBA. He was a crucial part of their success because he was a guy who accepted his role and flourished on that second unit. It also didn’t hurt that he played 78, 78, 76, 71, and 64 games as a Warrior. His health was no longer an issue and you saw a guy who had evolved his game to now be a devastating bench player. As a Warrior he shot 52% from the floor in his 5 seasons and played an important role in all of their title runs. You couldn’t help but feel great for a guy who went through absolute hell with his knee injury, bounced around forever, and finally found an awesome situation. it was almost as if the Basketball Gods rewarded him for the hell he’d been through.

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He’s not a HOF player or anything like that, but his career is still pretty damn impressive in my opinion. I still think it would have been cool if he was able to have one more farewell season as a Clipper given that’s where this all started, but in the end it’s cool that he walks away with 3 titles and his knee injury didn’t cost him a career.