Game 7 vs. San Antonio Spurs Is as Big as They Come for LA Clippers Franchise
For all the surrounding talk that the Los Angeles Clippers aren't "battle tested"—and that keeps coming up over and over again—history shows otherwise.
L.A. has played a Game 7 at some point in four of its last five playoff appearances now (2006 vs. the Phoenix Suns; 2012 vs. the Memphis Grizzlies; 2014 vs. the Golden State Warriors; and now, after a clutch 102-96 Game 6 victory, 2015 vs. the San Antonio Spurs).
The Clips are 2-1 in those games heading into Saturday's contest, with the only loss coming to that '06 Suns team during a game that boasted exactly zero players currently on the Clippers roster.
It did, however, stay consistent with a heartbreaking Game 5...
Don't worry, Clippers fans. If you can stomach Raja Bell tangentially keeping your team out of the Western Conference Finals by hitting a ginormous Game 5 shot in the '06 Western semis, you can certainly deal with a home Game 7 against the defending champs.
Actually, Game 5s have treated the Clippers worse historically than Game 7s. There was the Bell game. There was the Chris Paul, turnover-infested Game 5 against the Oklahoma City Thunder last season. There was the contest from just the other evening against the Spurs, when the Clips were up three in the closing seconds only to lose.
The Clippers aren't supposedly playoff-certified since they've never made it past the second round of the postseason, but L.A. has played a bunch of postseason games during the Chris Paul-Blake Griffin era. We're only in year four of that experiment, but over the first few seasons of it, L.A.'s six series have gone to at least six games five times.
In 2012, the Clippers had the 27-point comeback against Memphis during Game 1, and then won a Game 7 on the road. In 2014, they defeated Golden State in a remarkable Game 7, 126-121, possibly the best game in franchise history. Actually, here's where we can make up for the pain of the Bell video with a Griffin backflip.
Great play for a guy who apparently tenses up during big situations.
Even heading into Saturday's Game 7, that '06 loss to Phoenix is the biggest game in franchise history. We just forget about it because there wasn't a follow-up season (the Clippers won only 40 times in 2006-07), because Game 5 overshadowed it (go away, Bell) and because the Clippers' season finale ended up being a 20-point blowout.
Sure, there's plenty standing on Saturday's match against the Spurs, but Bell, Daniel Ewing, Mike Dunleavy or whomever else you want to blame the second-round loss on kept the Clips out of the conference finals, a step beyond whatever is going on in the 2015 first round. (I've never understood why Ewing takes so much blame for a perfectly acceptable closeout.)
That '06 team was the Cinderella of its postseason, not just because the Clippers were a No. 6 seed (falling to sixth was actually beneficial since, back then, division winners automatically got a No. 3 seed, and in 2006, that meant the 44-win Denver Nuggets were primed to get sliced up in Round 1).
Back then, these were still Donald Sterling's wretched Clippers. Elton Brand and Sam Cassell had just happened to do something different for a season, garnering an at-the-time franchise-record 47 victories.
There wasn't much of a future beyond that season. Everyone knew that.
The 36-year-old Cassell was clearly in the one-last-push-for-a-championship-before-everything-collapses-in-on-itself stage of his career. Brand probably wasn't ever going to replicate what ended up being pretty easily the best year of his phenomenal and underrated career. Unlike in 2015, there wasn't hope for a "Clippers-adjusted dynasty."
I use the word "dynasty" loosely here, not necessarily speaking of actual dynasties, but dynasties by the Clippers standard. And four consecutive years in the playoffs (2012 through 2015) certainly counts as a Clippers-adjusted dynasty when matched up against the organization's decrepit history.
But Saturday's Game 7 has a national importance.
Can expectations affect the historical emphasis placed on a game? It can certainly alter the attention it receives.
If the Clippers defeat the Spurs in Staples on Saturday, is that the end of the San Antonio's actual dynasty as we know it? Are the Clippers a potential San Antonian guillotine in that case? And here's the real difference between '06's Game 7 and 2015's: The expectations for the Clippers weigh far more now than they did nine years ago.
In hindsight, just about everyone considered 2005-06 to be a successful season. At the very least, the team exceeded expectations. This year is different, though.
In year four of Paul-Griffin, the rumblings are rumbling even more than they normally rumble.
You know these sounds, right? The ones that say the Clippers are an abject failure if they don't make it out of the first round, or that Paul isn't an all-time great because he's failed to make it to the conference finals over his first decade in the league, or that Griffin is a choker for his late-game turnovers (even though he's having an historically dominant series) or that the organization needs to let free-agent-to-be DeAndre Jordan walk away if it can't win.
I just spun off so many hot takes, my fingertips are burning.
That heartbreaking, Game 7, 20-point loss against Phoenix is the deepest the Clippers have ever made it into the postseason, but a drubbing at the hands of the Spurs might leave the team with more questions than the '06 Clips ever had to answer.
In actuality, there is no shame in losing a first-round series to San Antonio, even if a defeat births discontent. Heck, you could be the second- or third-best team in the NBA and still drop to the Spurs in Round 1. (Actually, after Kevin Love's injury and with the way Playoff Griffin and Playoff Paul have performed, the Clippers could certainly make a claim for being a top-three squad, as they could have last year when they lost to the Thunder in the second round.)
The Clippers have stumbled upon some poor playoff luck over the past couple of seasons. What are the chances they'd have to play the red-hot Spurs right out of the gate when they could've matched up with the roadkill Portland Trail Blazers had they stuck in the No. 5 seed? Meanwhile, they're glued into the Western Conference, forced to go up against powerhouses like the Thunder, Spurs, Grizzlies and Warriors each year.
Put the 2014 Clippers in the East, and they're going to the Finals. Do the same with this year's team, and there's a pretty decent chance they get there, too. Yet, a Saturday loss would exude more than just situational affliction.
The West is always going to be like this. Griffin averaging 24-13-7 in a playoff series (only Oscar Robertson has put up those numbers for a postseason) won't always be enough, especially with the lack of depth on the L.A. roster. Though, if there's one thing we've learned from six games of Spurs-Clippers, it's that a team with a core of Paul, Griffin, Jordan and J.J. Redick can go up against the best and beat them, even without loads of bench help. Now, we're about to find out if that can happen four out of seven times.
Follow Fred Katz on Twitter at @FredKatz.
Unless otherwise noted, all statistics are current as of May 1 and are courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
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