It is with a heavy heart that I come to The Memory Tourist and write this post. Anyone who has read my various pieces on basketball will know that there has been one recurring theme. I love The Los Angeles Clippers. There was no team with as great of a roster as them, and because of that logic, I personally believed that they would win the championship. This was going to be their year, and L.A. was finally going to have a new reigning team. No longer would they be the other team across the hall. The Los Angeles Lakers, by comparison, aren’t a terribly interesting team and I have been wanting to see them crumble for a whole season now.
Cut to this past Tuesday when The Clippers played The Denver Nuggets in a Game 7. In most cases, this is a testimony to each team’s quality. After all, The Boston Celtics going up against The Toronto Raptors deserved that final game, itself full of excitement. But this game was far from the case. It was something that should’ve been resolved awhile back now, and yet The Nuggets not only won, but it was with a terribly high margin of 15 points. It would’ve been higher, but as you watched the final minutes of Quarter 4 wind down, you saw everyone calling it quits. They took Kawhi Leonard and Paul George off the court. The Nuggets’ defense went down. It was over. The dream was ending in shambles.
Before I continue, I want to give credit to The Nuggets. While I don’t think they’re the greatest team in the league, they have been a fun one to watch thanks to their line-ups that include a very impressive seven-footer named Nikola Jokić. Add in Jamal Murray, and they are the young team that could. I believe that they won it fair and square, but they still feel TOO young to be as great as this win should suggest. Their comeback story is impressive for sure, but it does feel like The Clippers just set themselves up for a terrible amount of scrutiny, maybe even worse hazing when they return to The Staples Center next season.
Amid cries to fire coach Doc Rivers (I disagree with this decision), news came out that he became the first coach in NBA history to lead two teams to a Game 7 loss after acquiring a 3-1 lead (the other was The Orlando Magic in 2003). That detail makes him seem like the worst coach in the world, and I choose to think it was more of terrible timing and mistakes. If you look at Rivers’ other statuses, he’s one of the Top 10 coaches in terms of playoff wins. He has some merit worthy of keeping around. I’ll be embarrassed if he’s fired by the time this comes out, if just because his trial and error approach deserves more respect than it gets.
But that’s the thing that will always look terrible. The Clippers didn’t go out from a freak incident in the fourth quarter. This wasn’t a final shot that failed to go into a basket. It all starts with the reality that they, a team predicted by professional pundits to win the championship, ended up with a 3-1 lead. It was that simple. Sure The Nuggets sneaked one game in there, but it felt like a fluke. Nobody believed that Jokić and Murray were going to pull through.
All they had to do was win one game, and… it kept looking worse with each passing game. It started in Game 5. Where The Clippers lead by as much as 16 in the first three quarters, The Nuggets came back in the fourth to win by six. Game 6 found The Clippers winning by as much as 19 going into even earlier in the game before losing by 13. By Game 7, it felt like defeat was coming midway through the third quarter. They kept missing easy shots, hitting sideboards, and not going after the ball. As it stands, Murray nearly doubled the score of The Clippers’ star players (George and Leonard) COMBINED. For those wanting a tooth and nail finale, this was the opposite. It was more reflective of a gradual slump, each game becoming more predictably uninteresting by the minute.
Again, The Clippers only needed to win one game, and yet the 3-1 advantage didn’t play to their favor. It was a historic upset and one that will be difficult to fully forgive, if just by the nature of competitive sports. It’s annoying that this is how things played out. Those, like me, who kept waiting for The Clippers to unleash their full force were often disappointed throughout even the regular version of the season. I had small hope towards the start of the shutdown that things were starting to click, but that road bump really screwed them over in a way, not unlike The Milwaukee Bucks.
Sure, there were some dicey games in the previous round when they played The Dallas Mavericks, but they still had that energy. When they needed to pop off, they were reliable. With The Nuggets, it really felt like they had given up and were ready to go home. They didn’t seem all that excited to be there. Sure, Patrick Beverley still ran laps around everyone, but it wasn’t enough. Without making those shots and catching those rebounds, there wasn’t any hope of them coming back. Following their 3-1 advantage, I slowly began to fear more and more that even if they were going to pull through, The Lakers would annihilate them. They were not the team that I knew they could be.
The best that can be said came from George, who followed up the loss with an interview where he claimed that this was their first year together. He tried to allude to some hope that next year would be better. They just needed to build and become something stronger. I still believe that, in a perceivably regular season, that that is manageable, but so much of the narrative feels ruined by this Game 7 loss.
It’s the idea that Leonard couldn’t jump from NBA Champions The Raptors and make another team a hit in simultaneous years. It’s that even with star players like George, it wasn’t enough to give them an edge. With their slogan “L.A. Our Way,” you believed that they were going to be this scrappy team who could, and I’d argue that they still have a better team than The Lakers, but you wouldn’t know that from the past few games. When they were needed most, they failed, and all to The Nuggets. Not only were they out too early, but they couldn’t be called the best L.A. team because guess who’s still going?
That’s the thing. The Clippers still feel like The B-Team. This loss now marks a record 50 years without a championship contention. The next highest is The Charlotte Hornets, and I’m sure nobody is expecting them to do much of anything. The Clippers at least felt like they stood a chance because they have a legitimately great team.
So this is where I switch things up. This is where I get sympathetic and try to explore the proverbial “Why?” Why did this happen?
The one thing that has always been apparent going back to the start is that this was sold as a “wait and see” attitude. The Clippers famously had dozens of starting line-up changes (a record in the league), as if touting how great their team was. They could pull anyone off their bench and dominate the floor. However, with a team of even that dynamic, you’re left to wonder when it would all click. George took a little longer to actually start playing due to injury. Leonard was mocked for his “load management” where he played seemingly half as many games as his teammates. Everyone was out injured at different points. Unlike The Raptors, The Clippers never quite found a groove to compensate their short-comings. You just had to believe that Rivers had a secret.
Again, I feel like that became clear toward March when suddenly The Clippers would dominate for a period. They were slowly warming up and this was their moment. As annoying as it is to say, they needed months of practice to get a groove. By shutting everything down, it reset everything and The NBA Restart proved that they weren’t able to just pick up and go. They still could be good, but it’s clear how much was going to be an uphill battle. They needed to stay in a groove that absolutely nobody did because basketball was gone.
It wasn’t just that. I sincerely believe that The Clippers was a team that took the social changes a lot harsher than most. While The Bucks lead the boycott following the events in Kenosha, WI, Rivers gave the most touching words when arguing that he wondered why he loved a country that didn’t love him back. Sometime during this, George came out and admitted that the reason he wasn’t playing his best was a result of depression. And that’s what made the news.
The thing that is forgotten about basketball right now is that it’s not what it used to be. Sure, there are routines and The Clippers likely suffered from playing almost every other day into exhaustion. It’s arguable that the isolation at facilities in Florida didn’t help, where they were kept from their families and had to perform routine checks to make sure that nobody had contacted COVID-19. Every single day, they were under scrutinous observation, making one question the value of a game that goes beyond having a lack of fans in the stands or that they’re playing in the middle of August and not April.
I think of this like I do The Bucks. How do you focus on basketball when the world has such overwhelming darkness to it? When the court says Black Lives Matter, there’s a clear focus on social issues that have weighed heavily on most players. There’s a reason they kneel during the national anthem. They want change, and the world feels like it will never deliver on that. Add in that COVID-19 was threatening everyone’s lives, the sense of death hung over everyone. Montrezl Harrel lost his grandmother, and it was clear that it impacted his playing for the worst. It didn’t help that he won The Sixth Man of the Year right before this downward spiral. Similarly, Lou Williams went to a funeral and got in trouble for visiting a gentleman’s club for wings. It’s clear that the outside world was encroaching on their game.
And, in something that I know weighs heavily on me at least, I honestly wonder how much California’s forest fire issue bothers them right now. While not in Los Angeles directly, it’s hard to not recognize the smoke in the air. San Francisco's sky was orange last week. The whole world is burning and you’re stuck in a bubble, unable to protect those you love from the potential loss of either life or home. It’s a horrifying thought, and having a president who argues that “it will cool down” is a good reason not to do anything about climate change only exacerbates the situation worse.
There are days when I, someone who enjoys watching basketball, have to ask if it’s really worth it right now. As much as it fills me with joy, I recognize that these players are actual humans with real-life issues likely clouding their minds. The isolation only forces them to think about their loneliness, their inability to do anything but play. Even with The Bucks leading significant change, it wasn’t enough. Everything is still in disarray. This isn’t a problem specific to The Clippers, but given how open they have been about their mental health, you can’t help but understand how psychologically they were pretty damn terrible.
On the surface, I’m mad. The Clippers were a team that should’ve won it all. I could watch those playoffs and feel like there was so much missed opportunity. However, I do think that it’s to disregard how I’ve always felt about The Clippers. It was about waiting and seeing what magic they had hidden away. It had to build up to some triumphant conclusion. There was no time for that not only in terms of the time frame but also in focusing on basketball. It kept George, Williams, and Harrell especially from giving their all, and there’s a good chance that even more will come out on what happened. As much as that makes me sad, I hope that they use this free time to clear their heads and focus on what matters to them. I know what I want, and it’s pretty selfish. However, we all need to notice that our disappointment isn’t as much as their own personal woe, their feeling of being trapped someplace where they can’t do much of anything. I’m curious to know what they will do next, but I hope it will be some time before that announcement.
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