National Basketball Association

LA Clippers And The Shrinking Championship Window

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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The fact that the LA Clippers’ best days are probably behind them reminds the rest of the league just how hard it is to win in the NBA

In the span of around 24 hours during the 2016 NBA playoffs, the LA Clippers’ chances of making the NBA Finals rose to dizzying heights and then dropped to catastrophic lows.

Every NBA fan knows the story by now: The Clippers went from salivating over facing a Stephen Curry-less Golden State Warriors in the second round to losing to the Portland Trail Blazers in the first round seemingly overnight.

The Clippers’ championship window for 2016 opened and closed almost simultaneously, reminding everyone around the league that LA boasts an immensely talented team that has never reached the Conference Semifinals.

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Now, with the team’s core aging, and on the verge of hitting free agency, it seems quite possible that fans have already seen the Clippers’ peak. If this holds true, the LA Clippers may go down as one of the best teams to never make it past the second round, and a reminder of how hard building a championship team is.

In all likelihood, the Clippers will reach the second or third round of the playoffs, and lose to either the Spurs or the Warriors this spring. It seems odd to predict a ceiling this low for a team this talented, but it’s difficult to see anyone in the West beating the Warriors this year.

If this prediction is accurate, the Clippers may be at the end of their championship window. Chris Paul and Blake Griffin are both getting old, and both will be free agents after next season. Without these two players (Paul, especially), LA can’t even pretend to be a contender. If both re-sign, the team should be competitive for several more years, but may ultimately be no closer to a championship.

Compared to the Warriors, the Clippers may look lacking. But, in truth, this is an immensely talented team that matches up well with any team that doesn’t have Stephen Curry. Critics have attacked Doc Rivers for running the same team out every year, but it’s hard to think of a better strategy than playing to the strengths of players like Paul and Griffin.

Paul and Griffin haven’t been able to make this team ever truly elite though, and for a variety of reasons, this squad has never been past the second round of the playoffs. One of the understated truths of the NBA is that you have to be good AND lucky to win it all, and the LA Clippers never quite managed to put it all together.

Maybe what this team shows the most is just how difficult it is to win a NBA championship. The best path to this elusive goal is to build the best possible roster, look to trades or free agency to find any missing pieces, and then hope that everything breaks right.

Even Golden State got lucky, finding Curry and Draymond Green where they did in the draft. If the Clippers flame out here, it isn’t necessarily because they did anything wrong. With a talented roster and a good coach, this team has consistently put itself in a position to succeed.

Chris Paul is a truly elite player, even if he’s starting to decline, and Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan are also very good. Nobody expects this team to finish any lower than fourth in the West, and if this is the best that the LA Clippers have to offer, it’s hard to say that they should have done more.

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