The most hyped up and talented team of the season loses a legacy defining game to a savvy sleeper team led by a superstar European big man. Wait a minute, I’m talking about the 2011 NBA Finals…what are you talking about?
The Los Angeles Clippers lost to the Denver Nuggets on Tuesday night, ending their season far earlier than expected. They were the team everyone, including myself, believed had every piece it needed to win it all or at least get to the Finals. Their players were talented, versatile, confident, and outside of Kawhi Leonard, many were boisterous to a fault. Patrick Beverly, Lou Williams, Paul George, and Montrezl Harrel were just some of the guys who flaunted their newly constructed roster like it was a sure fire championship. Well, that overconfident and zealous attitude burned them, and it got ugly fast.
Fast forward through a roller coaster season, the Clippers still put themselves in a position to dethrone King James. Up 3-1, just one game away from a Western Conference title bought, things unraveled. After blowing fourth quarter leads in games 5 and 6 losses, Paul George and Kawhi combined for just 24 points in game 7 to officially end their season. The slandering the NBA media circuit has done to this team, players, and coaches has been pretty remarkable. The first thing I thought when the Clippers collapsed, though, was that I have seen this all before.
The 2011 Finals is probably the first Finals I watched from start to finish as a kid. I never bought into the “villain Lebron” narrative and was pulling for Miami to beat Dallas that year. They were more talented, more versatile, and more arrogant than their opponent. After building a 2-1 series lead, everything fell apart. Lebron had just 8 points in game 4 and the team collapsed right alongside him.
The similarities between these two series’ are eerie. The European big men, Jokic and Nowitzki, terrorized both teams respectively in the biggest and most pivotal moments. Both the Clippers and the Heat had all the media coverage, talked all the trash, and all of that inevitably became too much to carry. The video of Lebron guaranteeing “not one, not two, not three…” championships reminds me of Patrick beverly’s comments talking about the Warriors dynasty being over, saying “now it’s our turn.”
There is something to be said about the team that carries all the media baggage throughout a season. Looking back, really the only time the team with the most media hype and coverage during the entirety of a season to actually live up to it has either been led by Lebron James, or is the greatest team ever assembled in the Warriors. The Durant-Westbrook Thunder team collapsed, the Rockets continue to stumble in the most important spots, the Bucks and Giannis perhaps to a lesser extent, and now add the Clippers. Under-the-radar teams like the Nuggets, Raptors, or Heat have so much less to lose. These types of teams visibly play more freely, like they just won a big bet and are now playing the slots with house money.
In the biggest moments of the series, the Clippers players were tense and rigid. The sheer pressure of the moment cost them their season. Simply put, the Los Angeles Clippers were not ready.
My point is, Kawhi Leonard and Paul George are now forced to either rise to the occasion and find a way to handle the pressure, or they won’t. In that case, the Clippers are finished. The “all-in” strategy by Steve Balmer and co. will burn them worse than any franchise has ever been burned by a trade. They have no assets, no flexibility, and no long-term future. To salvage the state of the franchise, a championship in the next two years is not a want, but rather a desperate, desperate need.