Mister Ze wrote:This is going to continue into next season - even if the Clippers finish with the 1st seed they'll have this choke label attached to them.
The only way to put it away is by making it to the conference finals - which will be tougher.
Making the conference finals will not be enough - in fact, if the Clippers are cursed (as many are claiming), then the only way the curse can truly be broken is if they draw the Lakers in the 2nd round and defeat them while pulling off a Herculean stat: coming back from a 3-0 deficit, somebody scoring 100 points like Wilt Chamberlain, achieving a quintuple double, a miraculous kind of stat.
Many attribute the Clipper Curse to Donald Sterling. But didn't you know the Lakers are a part of this curse? Before he joined the NBA, Sterling helped Dr. Buss purchase the Lakers with a $2.7 million loan. This is the equivalent of the Boston Red Sox selling Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1918, just so that owner Harry Frazee could finance a Broadway musical, the Curse Of The Bambino. The Red Sox were punished with an 86-year World Series drought which remained intact until they defeated the Yankees in the playoffs while pulling off a miracle stat.
We don't know how strong the western conference will get, but we do know that it will the strongest of all the previous seasons. There's also the matter of Chris Paul, a former Clipper who ditched them for the Rockets (the very team who gave them the 3-1 collapse). He still has issues with Doc Rivers, and his hatred for them showed during the secret tunnel incident. Clippers could be forced to defeat the very man who made their franchise relevant and respectable for the first time in their lives. He could go to the east for an easy Finals path, or join the Lakers with LeBron as his last resort. If they can't defeat a lower seeded as the Nuggets, imagine how they'll feel when facing their arch nemesis and their old hero - it'll be as if Blake Griffin joined the Lakers.
Regardless, the Clippers will face an ultimatum season unlike any other in sports history.
