The agonisingly slow rise and lightning quick fall of the LA Clippers

The LA Clippers have been the joke of the NBA since, well pretty much since their conception. The franchise started off in 1970 as the Buffalo Braves and played for seven seasons in the New York State Capitol. During those seven seasons, they reached the playoffs three times in a row, one of the best runs in the whole history of the franchise. Because of issues with another team located in Buffalo, the owner Paul Snyder decided to sell the franchise to John Brown Jr, basically a middle man, who traded away all the good players on the team and took tanking to a whole new level. He did this so the attendance for the games would plummet and the Braves could break their lease and move away to a different city. The franchise ended up in the hands of Irv Levin, who took the franchise to San Diego and changed the name to the Clippers. The Clippers didn’t perform very well and missed out on the Playoffs every year until Levin sold the team to Donald Sterling in 1981. Under Sterling things only got worse and the Clippers became the laughing stock of the whole league. It took them until the ‘91-’92 season until they made it to the Playoffs again. That was the first time since they were the Buffalo Braves in the ’70s. Donald Sterling didn’t think very highly of his team and even the whole sport. The only reason he owned the franchise was so he could show them off to his millionaire friends but he never invested any money into the team and the Clippers were always running miles behind on the rest of the league in regards to infrastructure, equipment, travel arrangements, you name it. Moving the team to Los Angeles in 1984 was another selfish move, because the LA-based millionaire didn’t want to travel to San Diego all the time. The league tried to stop the move by suing Sterling but he countersuit the league and got them to drop the original suit against him. Between 1984 and 2011, the Clippers made it to the Playoffs four times.

But then everything changed, they drafted Blake Griffin and signed Chris Paul and the two started a new movement in LA, called lob-city because of all the crazy passes and alley-oops those two pulled out of their hats. The Clippers became popular and they were good, going to the Playoffs six years in a row, and progressing to the second round three times. But as good as things were on the court, that’s as bad as they were off the court. Donald Sterling, already arrogant when he bought the team in the 80’s, had become gradually worse over the years and it all blew up in his face in 2014. A recording came out of Donald Sterling who was angry at his mistress for “associating with black people”, Magic Johnson in particular. The whole basketball world and the country was up in arms and newly appointed NBA commissioner Adam Silver banished Donald Sterling from the NBA and forced him to sell the team. Steve Balmer purchased the Clippers and the new ownership changed the future of the franchise. Lob-City came really close to progressing to the Western Conference Finals the next season but lost in Game 7 against James Harden and the Houston Rockets. That still is the best result the Clippers have ever achieved to date. Things weren’t the same after that. Injuries urged the front office to trade away their stars Blake Griffin and Chris Paul and they started a rebuild. But to everyone’s surprise the Clippers didn’t count on draft picks and young stars. Instead, they created so much cap room that they could sign free agent Kawhi Leonard, who had just won the NBA title with the Toronto Raptors, in the 2019 off-season and traded pretty much all their future draft picks and talent away for Paul George who was playing for Oklahoma City Thunder at the time. With Kawhi and PG, the Clippers had set themselves up for a run to the title. This time they would show everyone in the league that they are not the laughing stock of the NBA anymore.

With two superstars and a whole locker room full of fantastic role players, the Clipper were the team to beat in the West. All eyes were on LA and this time they were focussed on the Clippers instead of the Lakers. And they loved it, the players were making plenty of noise on and off the court, already taking their claim to the title. As the season progressed, the two superstars started to act like divas in the locker room, claiming ridiculous privileges without backing it up with results on the court. Slowly Kawhi and PG were losing control in the locker room and their teammates started to express their disapproval, some privately and others publicly, like Montrezl Harrell. The rest of the NBA had smelled blood coming out of the Clippers’ locker room and everyone started licking their chops. Maybe the NBA title wasn’t going to LA just yet. When the NBA shut the league down in March 2020 because of the Covid-19 outbreak, the Clippers had time to regroup and sort out the problems in their locker room. They would return better than before in the NBA Playoff bubble and finally win that prize their fanbase has been longing for. But the dream turned into a nightmare pretty quickly. The Clippers were good enough in the run up towards the Playoffs where they had to play Dallas and Luka Doncic in the first round. Luka played fantastic and if it wasn’t for Kristaps Porzingis’ injury this could have been the end for the Clippers already. But they managed to progress after six games and met with Denver in the second round. The Clippers finally seemed focussed, they were ready to take it all the way and after four games they were up 3–1 against Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray and the rest of the Denver Nuggets. But then everything changed, they lost the next two games and in the deciding game 7, both superstars Kawhi Leonard and Paul George were nowhere to be found. It was one of the most embarrassing defeats in Playoff history for any title contender and it returned the Clippers back to their rightful position in the league, the laughing stock of the NBA. This season, 2020–2021, Kawhi and PG have another chance to finally turn this franchise around but halfway through the season, it is becoming very clear that these two can’t do it on their own. Their supporting cast is not strong enough and they need better players around them, especially on the point guard position. The pressure is on for the Clippers because if they don’t do it this year and they are forced into a rebuild, if Kawhi decides to leave, it could take years before they’ll be able to play any kind of role in the Western Conference. It took them 45 years to reach the top of the league and in less than five years they could have set themselves up for another 45 years of hurt.