National Basketball Association

Warriors "light years ahead" of Clippers in rivalry

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

foxsports

The Golden State Warriors have dominated their rivalry with the Los Angeles Clippers. Once upon it time, it was close. It isn’t anymore.

Yes, the Warriors dismantled the Clippers on Tuesday night in their first home preseason game of the 2016-2017 season. The score was 120-75. You read that correctly. 45 points.

However, it is just the preseason, a time I like to call “overreaction time,” where the games are meaningless and don’t help teams that much except for chemistry and lineup-experimenting from coaches.

This Warriors-Clippers rivalry stretches a good three years or so, ever since the Jarrett Jack and Carl Landry era and when they fell short of reaching the second round in the 2014 playoffs losing to the Clippers in seven games. Since then, the Warriors have dominated the Clippers and I don’t just mean the scuffles. I mean the scoreboards of the majority of the games.

According to landofbasketball.com, the Warriors have lost just once to the Clippers in the past two seasons, the loss coming on Christmas Day of 2014 by a score of 100-86. Since that loss on Christmas Day of 2014, the Warriors have won six regular season meetings in a row. Here’s another stat for you to absorb: head-to-head all time, the Warriors have won 121 to the Clippers’ 85 wins against the Dubs. This is showing the significant gap there is and has been between the top two division leaders the past two years.

It doesn’t hurt when your team wins the NBA Championship in 2015 and then gets a couple minutes away from repeating the next year. It displays the dominance they’ve had against the Clippers and almost every other team in the league.

It’s a new year and the Clippers have as good of a chance as any of the top teams to compete in the Western Conference and be one of the elite teams as long as Chris Paul and Blake Griffin stay healthy. However, they should be fearful of the Warriors. Not just because they’re one of the best teams in the league, but psychologically, since they’ve lost six in a row to the Warriors.

Adding a top 3 player in the league in Kevin Durant bolsters the Warriors’ chances in the continued dominance of the Clippers and makes the team that much more dangerous on both ends of the floor. The free-agent splash of Durant could help keep the Warriors “light years ahead” of the Clippers.