The Clippers are what they are, for the NBA and for the world, because of a bloody history full of notorious failures. Traditionally losers, always in the shadow of everything they have had next to them and with no more baggage than the sad 2021 Conference final, the one that allowed them to escape from that short list of franchises that have never set foot in said round and in which only Hornets and Pelicans remain. The problem is that the Clippers were born in 1970, they have gone through Buffalo, San Diego and Los Angeles and they have always had everything against them. Due to other people’s mistakes, but also his own, led by what is probably the worst owner in American sports, a Donald Sterling who took control of the entity in 1981 and who forced the move to a new city just to live off the crumbs. of Jerry Buss’ Lakers, who was at the same time the creator of Showtime behind the scenes to allow the NBA to once again boast the most captivating game on the planet after the television crisis of the 1970s and a huge battle for control of North American basketball with the ABA, that competition that has disappeared but has left so much legacy.
At the dawn of their creation, the Clippers had a respectable coach like Jack Ramsay and their only MVP, Bob McAdoo who later was part of those Lakers that won five rings in the 80s, coming off the bench. That team reached the Conference semifinals three consecutive years and then went straight underground. From 1981 to 2011 there were 30 years of Sterling’s mandate, the only thing he did was lead a life full of luxuries and make terrible decisions regarding sports. In that period, the Clippers made the playoffs four times and passed only one round, in 2006, with Mike Dunleavy as coach and Elton Brand as leader on the court, with Sam Cassell as teammate. The economic prosperity and Chris Paul’s never-satisfied desires for greatness took the point guard to Los Angeles, but not to the Lakers as he wanted at one time, in a transfer vetoed by the NBA. It was in the Clippers where he developed his magic, with the questioned Vinnie del Negro on the bench and a rising Blake Griffin who hit the ceiling from jumping so much to make dunks. In Sterling’s last years at the helm, an economic boom began that culminated in the expulsion of the owner for racist comments and the purchase of the franchise by Steve Ballmer, co-founder of Microsoft.
The Clippers have been to the playoffs in 10 of the last 13 seasons, three more than in the previous 41. But the amount of money invested freely by Ballmer, one of the richest men in the world and whose fortune already exceeds 100,000 million dollars, is not bearing fruit in the sports sector. Something that does not seem to matter to an owner who has spent everything he wanted and more to make the team relevant, important within the North American spectrum. Their pretensions of greatness will move the entity to Inglewood next year, far from the long shadow of the Lakers who, in one of the worst stages in their history, have signed LeBron James and won a ring (2020) while the Clippers They keep banging their heads against the same wall. One that will be different: the Intuit Dome will be the new headquarters of a mammoth project that has cost almost 2 billion dollars. And it is located, as fate would have it, next to that old Forum in which the Lakers became what they are, thanks to the association of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson on the court, the wisdom of Pat Riley on the benches and the good work of an eternal visionary like Jerry Buss in the offices.
When it’s not, it’s not
The move can give the Clippers a new dimension, but it won’t fix anything at all in terms of sports. They have lost against the Mavericks in the first round (4-2), showing that time eats away at anyone, also at a project that eliminated Luka Doncic from the playoffs in 2020 and 2021 and that today has succumbed to him because things change and The years go by, as demonstrated by the accumulation of failures that this team has suffered. One that reached the Conference finals in 2021, fell out of the playoffs in 2022, lost to the Suns in the first round last season (4-1) and has fallen again in the same place in the present. You can not get something out of nothing. And the franchise has been kidnapped since Kawhi Leonard decided to move to Los Angeles with Paul George to form a project that overcame a 3-1 loss in the Orlando bubble against the Magic and that came to form a dynasty.
Nothing could be further from the truth: the Clippers have not even been a moderately competitive team, neither with the eternal jinx of Doc Rivers nor with a respectable coach like Tyronn Lue, who has been suggested for the Lakers but has one more year on his guaranteed contract and He has already expressed his desire to continue where he is. This season, they finally reached 50 victories, 51 in total after four seasons without even giving the impression that this number that usually accompanies winning teams is significant to them. With the first two of them, yes, of 72 games due to the coronavirus pandemic and with 49 and 47 respectively. It seemed that those were going to be the years of the ring, of the bonanza, of the Finals. But they still haven’t entered that round and not even in the best stage of their sad history have they left another black list, that of five teams that has never reached the playoffs that decide the title. The Nuggets were, last year, the last to escape that dubious honor. And they did it with a ring in their pocket.
To make matters worse, if there can be more, Kawhi Leonard has only played two games in these playoffs, the same as last season. In 2021 he went to 11, but he also got injured along the way. And in 2020 he played all 13, but his level was more than poor in the moments when he was needed most. The former star is now very far from being one, light years away from once again representing that man who made LeBron James sigh with frustration when he took the court or who led the Raptors to a historic feat for Canada. He left the Spurs badly, that franchise from which no one leaves badly; and not very well about Toronto, a city he never wanted to go to but in which he was forced to play. In the Clippers he has done what he wanted, he has maintained his usual low profile and has surrounded himself with his environment, that twilight word that he put into vogue just because and that gives the sensation of consisting of some close people who know when he can play and when not, but they are not related to a franchise that almost never knows anything about its franchise player.
The rest of the sticks go to Paul George, just because and because he deserves them. There are no longer half measures to define a star whose ceiling is as high as it is low ground. A man who has enormous talent, but who stumbled through Indiana and Oklahoma, coming out (another) poorly from the first place and average from the second, where he joined Russell Westbrook and Carmelo Anthony to form a project full of top players that has become very fashionable in the last decade (see: the Suns) and that also moved to the Clippers. And neither in one place nor in another has he been able to measure up: barely 40% in field goals during the series against the Mavs, in which he has gone less than 20 points on average. He was unable to get away from defenders or have regularity in his throw. And losing all the defensive power that he had in his day and that made him a true all-rounder, one of the most complete and versatile players in the NBA. It seems like millennia have passed since then. The past is the past. And George, like Kawhi, is part of it.
A hopeless future
The Clippers’ past is not the same as the present because nothing can be that bad, but there is no hope that things will change in the short term. They have almost 172 million dollars committed for next year, Kawhi (who will turn 33 at the end of June) has almost 200 until 2028 and George a possible player option of more than 48 for next season, which we will see if accepts or if he decides, on the contrary, to look for another new big contract with just turned 34 years old. His value has dropped a lot in the market, but in the most prosperous economic era in the history of the NBA, anything can happen. We also have to see what happens with James Harden, who will be a free agent after the more than 35 million he pocketed from the renewal of the Sixers and the alleged betrayal of Daryl Morey. Another player who has been a historic, unequivocal offensive talent, and who was not to blame for the loss to the Mavs, but in the summer he turns 35 and is no longer what he was on the court, while he remains the same off the court. she, vices through.
And then there is Russell Westbrook, who is what he is and who can’t do much more. An explosive man before, married to statistics and the triple-double, MVP of the season and Top Scorer, but now reduced to minimum contracts after pocketing more than 350 million during his career and with a reputation for damaging everything he touches. He has 4 million pending for next week, he is on his way to 36 years old, he is all heart without head and energy without virtue. Another protagonist of stories from years ago and that remembered lost opportunity with Kevin Durant, with whom he was neck and neck until he stopped being so: 3-1 against the 73-9 Warriors and 11 triples by Klay Thompson in the sixth game that precipitated a very high-profile divorce and they gave the power of the Thunder to a player who began his particular fall to hell precisely when he took control of the situation. A sterile power for someone who has never known how to exercise it.
Beyond that and the rest of the moves they can make (Ivica Zubac and Terance Mann will continue), the Clippers will continue to be remembered as a cursed franchise, as demonstrated by a series that confirms that they can’t do much more. Kawhi has played 68 games, more than ever since he left the Spurs. Paul George 74, his highest with the Clippers. And not even because of that they have seen the light, with one injured again and the other showing a level that is far from being adequate for a star that is no longer. In fact, there are no longer any stars left on the Los Angeles team, which finished the playoffs with PJ Tucker as the starter (38 years old) to confirm that they do not live in the present. There are only memories, longing, nostalgia and service records in shreds, pieces. And another resounding failure, a move to escape the Lakers and a manifest impossibility to truly escape his own history. A franchise with a horrible past that has a staff that lives off the past. And you know what they say: the past is in the past.
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2024-05-04 09:48:17
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