5 reasons the Los Angeles Clippers shouldn’t ‘blow it up’

3. Can they finally catch a playoff break?

Resisting the urge to blow the Clippers up isn’t just because they have a s****y history and should desperately cling to the success they’ve found. It’s also about how many terrible breaks and heartbreaking collapses they’ve endured when they’ve been so close to legitimately contending.

Forget what you’ve heard about Griffin being soft or CP3 being a choke artist, because no one ever wants to tell the full story. All they care about are depressing accomplishments like this:

In 2013, the Clippers lost in the first round as the higher seed, but Vinny Del Negro’s questionable rotations were a huge part of the problem.

2014 still stings for Clippers fans, but even if CP3 owned up to his team’s unforgettable Game 5 collapse against the Oklahoma City Thunder, a few questionable calls — the botched out of bounds call that should’ve given the Clippers the ball back with 11.8 seconds left, not to mention Paul’s foul on a Russell Westbrook three-point attempt — were the turning points.

That Game 5 loss cost Lob City its chance at a 3-2 lead over the higher-seeded Thunder and they never recovered, but people also forget that the whole Donald Sterling controversy was a huge distraction at the time.

In 2015, the Clippers undoubtedly choked against the Houston Rockets, who won as many games as Lob City but earned home-court advantage via the tiebreaker. No one will ever forget that haunting Game 6 meltdown that saw a 19-point lead shrivel to a 12-point defeat, right when the Clippers were on the cusp of their first conference finals.

But people do forget that CP3 missed the first two games of the series, and despite being banged up for the next five games, still managed to post 33 points, 11 assists and seven boards in the Game 6 collapse — plus a 26-10-5-4 line in the Game 7 defeat on the road.

In 2016, injury struck again with both Griffin AND Paul being sidelined in the Clippers’ first round defeat against the Portland Trail Blazers. In 2017, Paul lost his star sidekick once again in the first round, but still managed to singlehandedly drag his team to a Game 7.

You could make a case that Griffin isn’t fit for long playoff runs, but don’t forget in his last healthy postseason (2015), he averaged a gargantuan 25.5 points, 12.7 rebounds, 6.1 assists, 1.0 blocks and 1.0 steals per game.

You could also make a case that CP3 “choked” in Game 5 of the 2014 NBA Playoffs and in Game 6 in 2015, but doing so would be taking a one or two-game sample size and overlooking the overwhelming body of evidence that testifies to his greatness as a playoff performer.

At some point, you have to determine whether a team has just been unlucky or whether it’s snake-bitten. Maybe Griffin can’t stay healthy long enough for the Clippers to make a real playoff run. Maybe CP3 is cursed when it comes to the conference finals. And maybe they’ll never get past the Warriors, Spurs or even the Rockets in the West now. The window may be closed already.

But to say anyone knows that decisively is another matter. Injuries shake up the playoff picture every year. San Antonio’s core is getting older. The Rockets fell off the map the last time they had an overachieving season like they just did in 2016-17. The Warriors aren’t going anywhere, but again, one injury could change everything, as the Clippers could easily tell you.

Hoping for some sort of injury luck isn’t the most convincing reason to keep this core intact by paying millions of luxury tax dollars, but for a historically unsuccessful franchise that keeps coming up short, the question of when fortune will finally be on their side is one worth asking.