og15 wrote:The matchup was better against the Spurs even if they were rolling that post-season, the Warriors matchup was definitely iffy, especially since it would be an already fatigued team with poor depth in that WCF, don't think we win that by any means. With how mentally and physically fatigued Blake and Redick reported themselves to be at the end of the Houston series, I just don't know how they now beat a team where the matchups just aren't great.Akklaim1 wrote:og15 wrote:Though they haven't been able to use Mbah due to his injury, even Gordon while no great defender can play much bigger and defend better when putting his all than Redick is capable of due to physical limitations. The Clippers could never defend like this consistently. 15-16 was the closest, but they would still have had matchup / size issues, the Rockets defense has been a treat to watch.
I think our 2014 team was better than the 2015 team. I'd say our chances at the chip were taken away in 2014. We had a better chance at beating the Spurs in 2014 than beating the Warriors in 2015. So the chokejob against OKC hurt more than the one the next year against Houston IMO.
The OKC series sucked, though a game 5 win guaranteed nothing except for a better chance. Just like we beat the Spurs in game 6 and 7, considering OKC ended up still winning game 6 on the road, it isn't that unlikely that they could have still won down 3-2. I don't think we win game 6 if we win game 5, which means it comes down to a game 7 on the road and those are historically very difficult. I know some would argue that the game 5 loss demoralized them, but I don't but it when the Clippers were up 8 at half, lost by just 6 and it was the 2nd half thst did them in. They game out gunning with that 30-16 first quarter, that's not a demoralized team.
The Clippers were always tired going into the 2nd round. We never had an easy first round matchup despite winning 50+ games every time. In the years we won the first round, they were all pushed to 7 games against fellow 50+ game winners. Winning 57 and 56 games would usually be good enough to get you matched up with a sub-50 win lower seeded team and be heavily favored to win in 5 games . Unfortunately, our absolute best years had to clash with teams that were a tad better.
