The sweet, surreal sound of the suddenly silent LA Clippers

After a year of noise, trash-talk, and premature anointing, the LA Clippers have finally gone quiet—and oh, is their silence sweet.

Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. All could be running smoothly and then—BAM! Seemingly out of thin air, the wind is taken out of your sails by some uncontrollable force. What matters most in these situations is how the punched party responds; Either they can get up off the mat and tactically strike back or stay down, roll over and concede a humiliating, blindsided defeat. Historically, the LA Clippers have fallen more in line with the latter train of thought.

But this year? This year was going to be different. This year was going to be the Clippers’ big breakthrough. This year—with Kawhi Leonard and Paul George and Lou Williams and Montrezl Harrell and Patrick Beverley and Doc Rivers and Steve Ballmer—the Clippers felt destined to snatch their long-awaited, ever-elusive, first NBA title.

Only they weren’t. They just did a great job of telling us otherwise.

Throughout the NBA season, the Clippers were one of three favorites to win the coveted Larry O’Brien trophy. They were the favorites and let us know they were. At their best, they looked unstoppable; A fluent offense with countless weapons, an impenetrable fortress on defense, a smack-talking group of mercenaries built to destroy, a true juggernaut in nearly every category.

Yet, for whatever reason, few mentioned the Clippers when they were at their worst. For as dominant as they looked when they were on their game, the Clips looked comparably horrendous when they were off it.

Nevertheless, before the NBA returned, it was fair to assume that the Clippers would have some of those kinks worked out come playoff time. After all, the style of play within the NBA playoffs was bound to suit the Clips more than any other team. These playoffs are comprised of physical, drag-it-out contests where talking trash raises the stakes and nearly every player needs to be able to put the ball on the floor, make high-pressure shots and switch on defense.

But after a not-so-convincing first-round victory over the Dallas Mavericks and one of the genuinely stunning, squandered choke-jobs in NBA history at the hands of the Denver Nuggets, the Clippers proved to be nothing but fraudulent. A talented gaggle of frauds, indeed, but an obnoxious gaggle of frauds who wrote checks they simply could not cash when it mattered most.

Following their conference semifinals loss to the Nuggets, LA became what it hadn’t been in so long: Quiet. An eerie stillness struck the NBA landscape, and the Clippers’ downfall was the beautiful yet ominous fog that summoned it.

But for a team with as much talent as these Clippers, this agonizing moment has to be their rock bottom. Right? One could only assume that with the hype train now officially derailed, they can only go up from here. Right?

Wrong.

Despite how horrible their season’s outcome turned out to be, things can only get worse for the Clippers.

Kawhi and George have one year remaining on their lofty contracts before player options become available. The former, though a top-five player in the world, seems perpetually melancholy and could be a flight risk at any moment; The latter is supposed to be the teams’ second star but is content with doubling as one of basketball’s most extraordinary disappearing acts.

Speaking of George, the Clippers quite literally mortgaged their future by shipping Danilo Gallinari, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and five future first-round draft picks to the Thunder in exchange for the once sought-after, now befuddling Houdini impersonator.

The Clippers also appear to have a Doc Rivers problem. Widely believed to be one of the league’s premier head coaches, Doc has now idly watched on as three of his former teams allowed a 3-1 playoff series lead to slip through their fingertips. These defeats—and so many other single-game or series-long losses—fall directly on Rivers and his continual inability to make proper adjustments.

Not only this, but Rivers is one of a few NBA coaches known to completely hand over the reins of his team to the stars that play for it. Because of this practice, Doc has gained an unmistakably strong reputation as a player’s coach. Though surely a great moniker to carry, teams coached by Rivers tend to see very little playoff success for this exact same reason.

While player’s coaches are an athlete’s dream, when one thinks of the NBA’s best coaches—Gregg Popovich, Nick Nurse, Erik Spoelstra, Brad Stevens—they do not picture the relationship a coach shares with his players. Instead, they think of the coach’s ability to adapt and the systems implemented for players to achieve long-term success. For as prolific a coaching career he has constructed, Rivers aggressively fails in doing those things.

Furthermore, the Clippers utterly botched the team chemistry experiment throughout the season. Attribute it to a number of injuries, new roles, the COVID-induced shutdown or whichever excuse you wish to make for this rag-tag, loudmouth team. Excuses do not change the fact that the chemistry issue boils down to one simple thing: The LA Clippers failed to build chemistry because of the sheer amount of egos within the organization.

Kawhi is one of the best players on the planet. PG, despite his shortcomings, is one of the twenty-five best. Harrell is the current Sixth Man of the Year who could easily start for 90 percent of NBA rosters. Williams is the reigning Sixth Man of the Year and a man who selfishly found it acceptable to leave the safe confines of the NBA bubble to pick up a twelve-pack of wings from an Atlanta strip club.

Morris is a wannabe junkyard dog who, when the going gets tough, chooses to hide behind a fence rather than jump over it and attack his opponent. Beverley is an adamant pest who worked harder than any current NBA player to make his way onto a professional roster. Rivers has been called one of the best NBA coaches for a decade yet is still riding on the fumes from his 2008 title.

To say that the Clippers don’t have an ego problem would be ignorant to the word’s fullest extent. After all, humble teams don’t coast their way through a season only to later assume they have a readily available on-switch to flick when in a bind. They definitely don’t have screaming matches in the locker room post-game, and they certainly don’t take pretentious shots at fellow NBA players on social media.

When you combine all of this information with the fact that the Inglewood City Council recently signed off on a whopping $1.2 billion agreement for the Clips to build their own stadium in Inglewood, California, the matter becomes an even deeper future disaster than it already appears to be.

The Clippers might finally be hushed after engaging in a year’s worth of unworthy, boisterous banter, but make no mistake: Their newly found, embarrassment-induced silence—though sweet as can be—will probably not last long. Whether they decide to run their mouth again next season remains to be seen, but for better or worse, talk surrounding the Clippers is virtually guaranteed to pick back up right where it left off.

Let’s just make sure we enjoy the silence while we can.