The early-to-mid 2010s Los Angeles Clippers have gone down in NBA lore as one of the greatest what-ifs in the sport’s history. On paper, they seemed to have all the talent necessary to succeed: a proven leader in Chris Paul, a dynamic scorer in Blake Griffin and an athletically gifted utility guy in DeAndre Jordan.
By any objective measure, the ‘Lob City’ Clippers were a lot of fun to watch.
Despite that, however, blowing a 3-1 lead in the second round of the 2014-15 playoffs was as close as they ever got to winning a championship.
Recently, Griffin appeared on JJ Redick’s The Old Man and the Three podcast and attempted to address the existing narrative that those Clippers teams failed to live up to expectations.
“I’ve said this to people when they always ask me about the Clippers,” he said. “I am in the camp where it wasn’t quite as bad as people make it out to be. Maybe towards the end, maybe like when some other things happened. That’s not the reason we didn’t win a championship. Our two chances to win a championship were those two years (2014 and 2015). After that, the Warriors and LeBron, they were just going back and forth.”
Nevertheless, he kept it real about the 2014-15 season.
“[The] 2015 [season] was just a complete mental breakdown,” he said. “I don’t think pettiness is why we lost in the playoffs, especially not that year. Or the year before, we lost to Oklahoma City. Pettiness didn’t lose those seasons for us.”
Griffin has been on something of a wild media tour in recent weeks, becoming a sworn enemy of Detroit Pistons fans everywhere in the process.
This season the 32-year-old will attempt to claim his first career title with the Brooklyn Nets. In the lead-up he has already started throwing little shots at the Los Angeles Lakers, no doubt in an effort to impress new teammate Kevin Durant – who has been doing the same.
Will Griffin win his first ring this season? Time will tell.
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