Los Angeles Clippers: 5 Reasons This Is Their Year

The Los Angeles Clippers have been the best team in the NBA early on in the 2016-17 season, but here’s why it might finally be their time to win a championship.

For years, the Los Angeles Clippers have been the red-headed stepchild in L.A. Despite their consistent playoff appearances and vastly superior record to the Los Angeles Lakers over the last half-decade, many would argue that Los Angeles is Laker Town until the Clippers win a title, or at least make a conference finals.

Despite winning at least 53 games in each of the last four seasons, despite winning the Pacific Division in back-to-back years in 2012-13 and 2013-14, and despite being a genuinely entertaining, championship-caliber team for years now, the Clippers simply don’t get the respect they deserve.

Maybe it’s all the whining and flopping. Maybe it’s that Laker mentality of “RINGZZZ over everything.” Or maybe it’s their complete lack of playoff success, which continues to be defined by their lack of a conference finals appearance, let alone an NBA Finals appearance.

Either way, the Clippers have always been labeled as chokers and frauds whenever the playoffs roll around, either by their harshest critics who judge the value of an L.A. team by the lofty number of titles the Lakers have won, or by those who have simply had enough of Lob City’s unbearably brutal playoff collapses.

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Through the first three weeks of the 2016-17 campaign, however, the Clippers have been the best team in the NBA, and this time, it feels different. It’s still very early in the new season, and no team has ever won a championship in November, but here’s why this might finally be Lob City’s year to break through and — dare we say it — win an actual NBA championship.