Colbinii wrote:Where is Chris Paul?
2008 - Game 7 puts up 18/8/14 with 5 steals and Peja/Mo Pete/Pargo combine 11/35 (4/15 from deep) losing to the Spurs.
Trash teams in 2010 and 2011
2012 - Chauncey Billups out for season
2013 - Griffin gets injured
2014 - Runs into peak KD while arguably being the best player on the floor.
2015 - Injured, I think they win it all if healthy this season
2016 - Griffin and CP3 injured
2017 - Griffin Injured
2018 - Injured after being up 3-2 against the cheat codes
2019 -Injured during regular season
On top of that the league VETOS A TRADE that would send him to the Lakers. What!
He had some bad luck but most of these teams weren't winning the title in my opinion.
The Hornets best chance was 08, but the loss has little to do with luck, he didn't play especially well (8 for 18) and Chandler had a great game to make up for poor shooting of some other opponents. There are a hundred games as unlucky as this. I don't think the Hornets really had it after this season even when he was healthy.
For Clippers I'm not counting 2012 as a real contending year, they played at 50 W pace and were a 5 seed, and the depth was not as good with no Crawford, Bledsoe wasn't ready, etc. Billups was washed so his injury doesn't matter that much. They got swept by the Spurs, they were not contention material.
13 - Griffin injury is bad luck, but the favorites were clearly MIA, OKC, SAS
14 - Healthy year, they just got beat due to having bad perimeter and transition defense. My memory is this was a series where everything was "too easy" for Durant and Westbrook
15 - The Clippers got a split in Houston without Paul, and were up 3-1 with him healthy. I do not blame Paul's injury much for this. I also think their chances of beating GSW gets overblown, GSW had been the best team all year and were far deeper which is a problem for a Clippers team that had 6 real players. I mean they beat a flawed Rockets team easily that the Clips lost to.
16 and 17 - bad luck with injuries, but I think there's reason to believe the Clippers were fading from real contention at that point anyways and would have been in tough against GSW either year, especially 17
18 - Obviously bad injury luck, but Paul isn't a durable player and D'Antoni was forced to push him with a team with no depth
Mainly I see the Clippers as one of the greatest pretenders of all time. They were a team that had a good defensive rank in the regular season but in the playoffs were obviously flawed as guys like Blake, Redick, Crawford were not giving them a lot on that end, and Deandre is a box score guy only on D. They never were a top 2 seed, unlike the Suns there was never a year where they killed the regular season to 60 + Ws and went in as the favorite only to lose. Blake Griffin was overrated as a 2nd banana, I don't think he should even make the HOF at this rate. He would have less hype if he played now as people began to realize a big star who doesn't space the floor and doesn't defend is hard to build a contender around. This team is everything the phrase pretender is meant for, good enough in the regular season to pretend they're a big boy, but they were going to go down in the playoffs for being too soft on defense and physically/emotionally and we all knew it
However, 2018 alone is enough to put someone up there for bad luck, I guess. The Rockets legitimately did come close to being champion