LA Clippers fan reaction to another first-round exit from the NBA Playoffs
As the Clippers exited the NBA Playoffs as the first round stage once again, is it high time that the curtain was brought down on the 213 Era in Los Angeles?
THERE’S nothing quite like sports’ ability to deliver the highest highs and lowest lows while dragging fans along on that journey kicking and screaming.
I recently explained the difference between pro league and collegiate fandom in US Sports to a close friend. As an outsider, the best gems I could drop on the topic were that college supporters tend to be more loyal, with their teams more closely resembling the places surrounding the schools that house them.
By comparison, pro leagues like the NBA with their franchising models - and the ability to up sticks at almost any moment and relocate across the country - tend to invite fans with naturally higher expectations and, therefore, comparatively more fickle fanbases.
You’ll see a lot of that writ large right now, with the first round of the NBA Playoffs coming to a close, especially given the pedigree of some of the teams that have found themselves on flights to Cancun.
Unfortunately for this particular writer, my team are the latest to secure their spot on the Mexican beaches - assuming they’re not consigned to Charles Barkley’s choice of Galveston, Texas instead.
My previous SubStack entry resembled the highs and lows I spoke of at the top of these latest musings. From the lows of the Los Angeles Clippers’ last first-round Playoff exit to the highs of a team on a 28-7 run displaying a genuine identity on the court, back to the despondence that I feel in the aftermath of a six-game series loss to the Dallas Mavericks.
Similar to last year, I find myself back in a place where I feel a bit silly for drinking the Kool-Aid and believing my team could go deep in the Playoffs once again. Once again, health was an issue. Once again, the Clippers have gone down with a whimper. Once again, I’m questioning what roster moves can be made so I don’t find myself in the same place a year from now.
After the game five loss in Los Angeles, I pondered whether the roster was constructed so poorly that the only natural big change that could be made was to fire head coach Tyronn Lue. While I acknowledge he’s probably a top-three coach in the league right now, he also continues to display a stubbornness that has often been his team’s undoing in the past two seasons.
However, all it took was our neighbouring Lakers to fire unpopular head coach Darvin Ham for the Clippers to brief that they intended to sign their guy to a new multi-year deal - a sentiment Lue welcomed in his post-game interview on Friday evening.
I’m quietly glad those thoughts of his departure came and went given how highly I regard Coach Ty, but what’s next? Because, in my mind, something still has to change.
The natural next place to go is the two most disappointing performers of the Clippers' first-round series, partners in crime Paul George and Russell Westbrook.
Let’s start with the former, my second favourite NBA player of all time behind Allen Iverson.
What made PG and AI so great was that they were simultaneously capable of being so great and yet capable of being so human in the same breath. Both have put their foot in their mouths off the court, but they’d usually show the kind of introspection to turn it around or make it right with their talent on the floor.
As per my last article, one of the things I love about being a Clippers fan is that I see the franchise as the more “human” of the two teams in Los Angeles, the one with all the soul if not the accomplishments to show for being so down-to-earth.
The problem with George’s level of humanity - and what makes him markedly different to Iverson - is how that level of introspection manifests. A fellow UK-based member of Clipper Nation, Richard Mitchell posted to a group chat on Saturday morning…
“I think PG has a massive psychological problem. He’s very inwardly reflective, to the point that he misses a few shots and you know he’s down on himself and can’t focus because his body language changes and his energy vanishes. Whereas if he gets hot early, he’s utterly amazing and capable of brilliance.
“His baseline is impossible to set and as he gets older, it’s getting more up and down night in night out. That’s why you have Playoff P and Pandemic P inside of a two-game stretch.”
That eloquently sums up my biggest gripe with George being tasked with being one of the stars trying to bring the first NBA title to this franchise. Every time he speaks about his own game, he seems to let slip that he’d rather play a smaller role, be relied upon less and that the lights of the biggest stages shine too brightly for him these days.
Conversely, the enigma that is Russell Westbrook III continues to perplex fans. Like his close friend PG, Russ can go from being the driving force behind his team to completely unplayable with little in between. However, the contrast in mentality between these two SoCal guys could hardly be more stark.
While Palmdale’s George seems determined to play less of a part, Long Beach’s Westbrook is intent on being the main character. The problem with that is, at 35 years old and earning less than $4million as he weighs up an off-season player option that reaches that figure, the latter should be ceding to his teammates rather than trying to carry the offence on his own back.
Russ’s belief that he is still one of the most talented guys in the league truly hurt the Clippers in this Playoff series, as he shot 13/50 from the field and 4/17 from three-point range. That coupled with reports in The Athletic now suggesting that it wasn’t his idea to come off the bench leaves me contemplating his future as much as anybody’s on the team.
The problem the Clippers' front office has caused for themselves is that their current roster is so poorly constructed.
Three of their four stars are free agents this summer and at least two of them will be asking for the max - while Russ’s “I’m still the guy” mentality will no doubt have him demanding more from his next deal - they have one second-round pick this summer and they have no legit young star-of-the-future guys on the team.
Kawhi Leonard is now locked into a multi-year deal. James Harden deserves a bag as he raised the team’s regular-season ceiling and exceeded expectations as a scorer when his KPI was to be a high-level playmaker. It’s as hard to imagine how this series would go without the latter as it is to think about how it goes with the former.
It’s unlikely that they’ll be able to find a best-for-all-parties deal that sees George leave on a sign-and-trade this summer, so the most likely scenario is that Steve Ballmer and Lawrence Frank see their squad as a near-lock for a top-six seed - in what is such a competitive conference - that they’d rather not attempt to twist with the weak hand of assets they possess.
The most frustrating part is that I’m a huge admirer of George and Westbrook off the court, but both felt like such overwhelming minuses for the team in these Playoffs that they should be seen as leading candidates to fall to the cries for the end of the 213 Era this offseason.
So the lows will continue to sting for a little while longer. The highs will probably return soon enough and I’m sure, being the eternal optimist fan I am, I’ll miss myself drinking the Kool-Aid until I’m punch-drunk and punched out once again.
That is, in a way, what we should be encouraged to do as fans, though. Because once that game ball goes up and the game is on next season, feelings of love will be restored and hope will spring eternal once again.
After all, it’s not the hope that things will eventually fall into place that kills you. It’s that hope that sustains us as sports fans.