For much of the offseason, teams spent time clarifying what direction they were going heading into the 2017-18 season with. The Chicago Bulls traded away Jimmy Butler, bought out Dwyane Wade, and are in full-rebuild mode. The Minnesota Timberwolves traded for Butler, signed vets like Taj Gibson, Jeff Teague, as well as Jamal Crawford and are all in on an attempt to make the playoffs.

When it comes to the L.A. Clippers, however, many weren’t sure where to put them after their retooled their roster surrounding Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan by adding nine new players. They lost Chris Paul, J.J. Redick, and Jamal Crawford, but were able to add Danilo Gallinari, Patrick Beverley, and Lou Williams.

When asked about the goals for the team immediately after the moves, both head coach Doc Rivers and newly re-signed star Blake Griffin tempered expectations due to the new additions as well as the unknown nature of Griffin’s toe injury.

When asked about the team’s goals again with just one week left until the NBA’s regular season tips off, Griffin relayed where his team’s goals stand right now.

“Make the playoffs,” said Griffin. “I don’t really see any other goal. Obviously, it’s to win a championship, every team starts out at the beginning of the year saying we want to win a championship, but you gotta have a goal of getting to the playoffs first. The little goals of coming in, getting better every day in practice, all those small things. As a team, we want to make the playoffs.”

Normally, earning a spot in the postseason would’ve been a given for a team like this. However, they weren’t the only team in the Western Conference to make moves and stock up on talent. Teams like the Timberwolves, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Houston Rockets got All-Stars without breaking up much of their cores, but the Clippers saw three players from their core and six other rotational players exit Los Angeles this offseason.

The nine players will clearly force the Clippers to take time and transition into a more team-oriented game, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a transitional season for the club.

“No, I wouldn’t really call it a transitional season,” added Griffin. “We just have new players. To me, transition makes it seem like it’s a rebuilding year or something like that. I guess it would be rebuilding we had done something, but we haven’t really done anything over the past five or six years. It’s different. It’s a different team, different look, but I don’t know about [calling it] transitional.”

Being in Hawaii together for a week of training camp and team bonding, it’s been easy for the Clippers to build chemistry off the court. It’s been hard, however, for them to build the necessary chemistry on the court due to all the nagging injuries they’ve been hit with this preseason. Griffin returned to action from a toe injury only to see Austin Rivers (glute), Gallinari (foot), Dekker (oblique), and now Beverley (knee) go down with minor issues.

The Clippers’ regular season begins in L.A. next week as they take on the Lakers, where they hope they’ll be healthy enough to chase a postseason appearance for the seventh consecutive season.