The Los Angeles Clippers Are The NBA’s Most Hate-able Team

"In professional wrestling, a heel (also known as a rudo in lucha libre) is a wrestler who is villainous or a “bad guy,” who is booked (scripted) by the promotion to be in the position of being an antagonist. They are typically opposed by their polar opposites, babyfaces, who are heroic or “good guy” characters. — Wikipedia"

The Los Angeles Clippers are almost certainly the most hated team in the NBA after Wednesday night’s shenanigans at DeAndre Jordan‘s house. Their actions were entertaining but unprofessional and borderline dirty tactics. Sure, the free agent moratorium lasted until midnight on Jul. 9 and none of the deals were official, but the agreements are considered to be a commitment.

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Players changing their minds has happened before and for the most part, we never hear about teams making last ditch efforts to get a player to change his mind before officialy signing the contract.

But that wasn’t the case when the Clippers took planes, cars, and banana boats (and maybe swam?) to get to Jordan’s residence in Houston. The Clippers and DeAndre went into territory that has to make every front office uncomfortable. It may just be unprofessional and underhanded but there isn’t anything outside of the rules with what they did. For them it didn’t matter what the situation looked like as long as they won.

The NBA may be real, unlike the scripted storylines of the wrestling world, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t drawing plenty of heat from fans and other teams by handling their business in this fashion. Zack Lowe described the whole situation as carnivalesque. A multi-billion dollar business was reduced to a spectacle that was very entertaining but ultimately could end up forcing changes to free agency if the NBA wants to avoid another debacle.

But let’s ignore the real problems the saga created for the NBA and focus on what really matters to fans: entertainment. For the average fan, they got to enjoy numerous photoshops and memes. They laughed at the emoji battle. They enjoyed the fact they got to hate the Clippers just a little bit more.

"In order to gain heat (with boos and jeers from the audience), heels are often portrayed as behaving in an immoral manner by breaking rules or otherwise taking advantage of their opponents outside the bounds of the standards of the match. Others do not (or rarely) break rules but instead exhibit unlikeable, appalling and deliberately offensive and demoralizing personality traits such as arrogance, cowardice, or contempt for the audience. — Wikipedia"

Just like when LeBron James made his infamous decision to join the Miami Heat in 2010, it isn’t always about what you do as much as it is about how you do it. It wasn’t as if the Clippers weren’t easy to dislike before this or at least, for many fans, they find the Clippers to somehow be worse offenders than any other team.

Good or bad, the crowd reaction tells you if a wrestler is over with the fans. It isn’t exactly the same in the NBA, but it is clear that fans love to hate on the Clippers. If this were wrestling, the Clippers’ music would play as they walked out and fans would be ready to lustfully boo them for the way they’ve carried themselves the past few season.

A heel in wrestling goes against the established norms of how a good or “baby-face” character is suppose to act. They are still very entertaining and fun to watch, but fans boo them because of the way they go about trying to win. It isn’t as if people don’t enjoy watching the Clippers play basketball. Fans appreciate how good this team is with Chris Paul and Blake Griffin connecting on alley-opps and dazzling playmaking ability, but that doesn’t mean they are likable just because of a few highlights.

It also matters that the Clippers are a good team. The Los Angeles Lakers have drawn plenty of heat over the years, but when they are a boring lottery team they just aren’t as fun to boo.

The Clippers are led by CP3 and despite the fact every player in the league flops from time to time, CP3 flops a little more often and more obviously in the eyes of fans. It doesn’t help his perception that he complains about the referees often. He also appears to have no problem taking shots at players and then acting as if he did nothing. Classic heel behavior.

Blake Griffin is seemingly in one ad every commercial break during games, which isn’t such a bad thing, but fans have strange rules for how exposed a player is allowed to be, is seems. Seeing Griffin trying to sell us a Kia every 15 minutes annoys plenty of fans for whatever reason. Right or wrong, it didn’t help during the “Lob City” era in Los Angeles that the Clippers didn’t hesitate to throw up an ally-oop no matter the score.

And who coaches the team? Doc Rivers. The man who seems to sign all of his former players and added his own son to the roster at a time when no one else in the NBA seemed to want anything to do with him. He’s the coach and the GM of the Clippers but he never seems to be responsible for what is happening on the court.

"Common heel behavior includes cheating to win (e.g., using the ropes for leverage while pinning or attacking with foreign objects while the referee is looking away), employing dirty tactics such as blatant chokes or raking the eyes, attacking other wrestlers backstage, interfering with other wrestlers’ matches, insulting the fans (referred to as “cheap heat“), and acting in a haughty or superior manner. — Wikipedia"

Even before the DeAndre debacle, they weren’t helping themselves perception wise by adding two of the league’s more reviled characters during free agency. They may have added a winner in Paul Pierce but he’s also the same man who yelled “series” before seeing his team eliminated from the playoffs. Lance Stephenson helped the Indiana Pacers play in two straight conference finals but after a poor season with the Charlotte Hornets he might be better known for blowing into LeBron James’ ear than for his basketball.

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When you look at the team even before the 2015-16 season begins it is clear why fans seem to have an adverse reaction to the Clippers and their players. Other teams often can be caught engaging in the same behavior but they don’t get the same jeers that this team does. It may just be perception that fuels fans’ loathing for Los Angeles but the idiom “perception is reality” often holds true. No one said it was fair.

For the most part none of this matters. Fans may think the Clippers think too highly of themselves, they can think that DeAndre situation is another reason to look at them as the bad guys. But when it comes down to it, they are still a very good basketball team. Winning is the only thing that matters and the Clippers will likely make another run in the Western Conference.

In any wrestling promotion, you have faces and heels and sometimes the heels are champions as they find a way to sneak in their cheap shots, convince the refs they aren’t doing anything illegal, and still win. The Clippers may very well end up being a heel champion if they can make it out of a tough Western Conference.

Any good will from the way the team handled the Donald Sterling situation is gone. It is going to be difficult to convince the fans outside of Los Angeles that this team isn’t as hateable as they appear. They might as well embrace their heel characteristic and enjoy the boos.

In the end it doesn’t matter what people think of them. It only matters if they win.

Next: DeAndre Jordan Made The Right Decision In The Wrong Way

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