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Los Angeles Clippers: Resurrection Of The Clippers Makes Hating Them Easier

By Jameson Miller

Jan 28, 2015; Salt Lake City, UT, USA; Los Angeles Clippers center DeAndre Jordan (6) reacts during the first half against the Utah Jazz at EnergySolutions Arena. The Clippers won 94-89. Mandatory Credit: Russ Isabella-USA TODAY Sports
Jan 28, 2015; Salt Lake City, UT, USA; Los Angeles Clippers center DeAndre Jordan (6) reacts during the first half against the Utah Jazz at EnergySolutions Arena. The Clippers won 94-89. Mandatory Credit: Russ Isabella-USA TODAY Sports /
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The Los Angeles Clippers’ championship hopes died on a Friday afternoon in July. They were reborn five days later on a Wednesday evening.

Sure, it wasn’t the sports noir of former boxing champion Stanley Ketchel being shot in the back at the breakfast table, but between the Twitter maelstrom that raged during the intervening days and the misplaced moral consternation on display across the NBA’s digital landscape, you’d never guess that no people actually died this time.

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But nobody wants to talk about DeAndre Jordan’s free agency dalliances anymore. Nor should they. That moment has faded into the background for the Clippers, Jordan and NBA fans in general. The Mavericks have moved on—or at least they’ve tried to.  Truth be told, DeAndre Jordan isn’t all that interesting of a figure.

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He’s very tall and athletic, works hard, is a game changer on the defensive end and has an often undervalued offensive impact. He also likes Batman, which is cool.

What’s still fascinating, and what still often goes undiscussed is how achingly close the Clippers came to having their championship aspirations completely submarined this summer, and how far the pendulum has since swung in the opposite direction. Plenty has been made about the hateability of the Clippers in recent seasons.

Chris Paul whines to the refs, Blake Griffin is a prima donna, Doc Rivers is a caricature, Glen Davis simply… is. On and on the bile goes. In spite of what most people might say if pressed, most of the indignation about DeAndre’s flip-flop was stemming from a place of Clipper-hate (which, by the way, is fine), not any kind of justifiable moral high ground.

People doubly hated Jordan’s indecision because the Clippers were so dead, so far from legitimate title contention with seemingly no identifiable way back, that having the rug pulled out from under the schadenfreude was too much to process.

Had DeAndre walked, the Clippers would have still been capped out, riding their two lone All-Stars (one of whom is on the wrong side of 30, though still elite), bringing back a questionable supporting cast and left with no tangible way to improve.  They would have been pulled backward into the middling pack of pseudo playoff contenders grasping at straws, and seventh seeds.

Here is a list of the players the Clippers were left with who could have conceivably sniffed the rotation during the five-day stint when it seemed DeAndre Jordan had jumped ship: Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, Jamal Crawford, Lance Stephenson, Austin Rivers (maybe), J.J. Redick, Wesley Johnson, Hedo Turkoglu (maybe), Glen Davis (maybe).

Since July 9, the Clippers have signed or re-signed: DeAndre Jordan, Paul Pierce*, Cole Aldrich, Josh Smith, Pablo Prigioni and Chuck Hayes. (I know we all remember where we were when Nikoloz Tskitishvili signed with L.A., but I left him off the list since his contract is of the “make-good, training-camp-invitation” variety).

*(So as to not be guilty of intellectual dishonesty: yes, Paul Pierce agreed to terms prior to the Jordan saga, but: A) nothing official was signed, and we obviously saw how much that can mean, and B) Jordan’s decision moved Pierce’s signing from the “desperation veteran addition on a middling squad” end of the cliché spectrum all the way to the “solidifying a championship-caliber rotation with wily championship experience” end).

Again, since spending slightly less than five summer days as the walking dead of the NBA’s upper echelon, the Clippers have added players that total a combined five All-NBA selections, 10 All-Star appearances, two All-Defense selections and one NBA Finals MVP award among them.

Arguments about where those players are in their respective pre-prime, prime and post-prime cycles aside for the moment, the Clippers went from desperately needing Big Baby back and thanking their lucky stars for the impending arrival of Wesley JaMarr Johnson to boasting 9-1 title odds as Vegas’ fifth overall favorite to win the Larry O in June.

One of the more disheartening consequences of sports hate isn’t necessarily when a team that you detest succeeds, it’s when that team succeeds after being so assuredly screwed just moments before. Think Game 6 of the Miami–San Antonio Finals in 2013.

The body language of Heat players started to slump with half a minute still to play, fans started filing out of the arena (then hilariously—and fruitlessly—tried to get back in), the Spurs sideline had a restrained giddiness about it (Pop smiled, I swear) and the air and energy in American Airlines Arena wreaked of resignation, even through the filtered reality of a television screen.

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    • They were dead. DEAD.

    The fact that the Heat went on to win a still-very-close Game 7 two days after Ray Allen’s miracle (though entirely routine) shot was somehow more or less academic—Tim Duncan missing a potentially game-tying bunny in the closing moments couldn’t approach the emotional depths of having the Heat go Rasputin on everyone and coming to just moments after lying in a lifeless, bloody heap on the bearskin rug.

    The Clippers current championship caliber iteration is made all the more hateable by their stunning resurrection. The Clips are the serial killer continuing to chase teenaged damsels around suburbia even though we just saw someone empty an entire clip into their chest. They’re the Shredder somehow surviving a date with an industrial trash compactor.

    They’re Nurse Ratched ordering Randle McMurphy to get lobotomized right after he came within an inch of strangling her to death with his bare hands. They were dead, dead, dead. Now, they’re not only not dead, they’re going to be really, really good and seemingly buttressed some of their most glaring weaknesses.

    You could certainly argue that individual attributes about the Clippers’ players, coaches, owner or logo redesign are the primary sources of opposing fans’ ire. That’s fair. But that they were painfully close to being dead in the water makes it so much worse. You know, if you already hated the Clippers.

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