LA Clippers: What exactly is “championship or bust” for the Clippers?

The LA Clippers have just completed a shocking collapse against the Denver Nuggets, dropping a 3-1 lead, and Paul George had some bizarre postgame comments.

The LA Clippers had their best chance in years to break one of the many curses that linger over their franchise on Tuesday night. They built up a dominant 3-1 lead over the Denver Nuggets and were one win away from getting to the Western Conference Finals where they would finally meet their same-city rivals, the Los Angeles Lakers.

They dropped Game 5 111-105, then dropped Game 6 111-98. In Game 7, they carried a lead into halftime, but the wheels fell off in the second half once again and lost 104-89. Second halves were the nemesis for this Clippers team. They had a net rating of -12.5 in second halves over the course of the series, and in their three-game losing streak to close out the series they had a ridiculous -46.1 net rating.

Getting crushed in second halves of a playoff series like this tells us a lot about a team, as did some of the comments from the Clippers after Game 7. For starters, Marc Spears unloaded this bombshell:

The Denver Nuggets were playing their second straight seven-game series, and Nikola Jokic played 40 minutes and Jamal Murray played 45 minutes. The Clippers only had two players who played over 30 minutes: Kawhi Leonard at 44 and Paul George at 38.

So just who were the LA Clippers that were in such dire straits that they could only play hockey shift stints in length? What is the cause for this? Were the Clippers paying the price for poor conditioning before or during the bubble? Why are they so special that in a Game 7 brought about by their own inability to close, they did not have the wherewithal to play when called upon?

The Clippers set world records load managing players up and down their roster in an effort to make sure they were ready for this moment. When it finally came, they wilted in the bright lights.

It’s exasperating, especially considering the accomplishments of the players on this roster, outside of Kawhi Leonard, do not reach the level set by the self-aggrandization of various members of this team. For example, Clippers fans must be delighted to hear what Paul George had to say postgame:

Paul George didn’t view this season as championship or bust? The man who was brought to LA in exchange for *takes deep breath* Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Danilo Gallinari, the 2022, 2024 and 2026 first-round Clipper draft picks, 2021 and 2023 Miami Heat first-round draft picks and swap rights in 2023 and 2025, would rather see 2019-20 as a gap year, maybe a year to figure things out and see how they go.

Some franchises go decades without having the opportunity to do what the LA Clippers just squandered. Imagine the Charlotte Hornets shedding years of frustration and trading the whole war-chest for a star who after struggling and failing in this fashion just shrugs and says “It’s not championship or bust anyway”.

Imagine the owner who just bought an arena in cash for this franchise to play in, buoyed by the expectation of his team working hard and living up to its spectacular potential hearing his team’s second-best player call a year “not championship or bust”.

In the 2018-19 playoffs, a doomed Clippers squad came back from 31 points down against perhaps the most talented team in NBA history, the Golden State Warriors, to pull off a shocking victory. That game didn’t matter because they were going to end up getting smashed to bits eventually in that series and those players knew it, but they wouldn’t go down without a fight.

That Clippers team is not this Clippers team, and that’s the problem.