The Los Angeles Clippers entered the 2019-20 NBA season as the team to beat. They were coming off an impressive run in 2018-19 and got significantly better with the additions of Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, plus other solid pickups along the way like Reggie Jackson and Marcus Morris.
Doc Rivers’ team wasn’t always at full strength but when they had their stars ready to go, they completely outplayed their rivals, playing lockdown defense and executing perfectly in the offensive end as well, and that’s why everybody thought that they were poised to finally make it to the Western Conference Finals for the first time in franchise history.
Fast-forward to the Western Conference Semifinals and they were up 3-1 to the Denver Nuggets. As you may know by now, they couldn’t hold on to that lead and blew three straight games to go home early and become the league’s most criticized team we’ve seen in a while.
In fact, former NBA Champion turned analyst Richard Jefferson recently said on ESPN during their season recap that the Clippers meltdown was so bad that it was similar to what happened in Chernobyl:
“As the series got closer the Clippers really struggled. And, you know, when they got back to the Lakers to that must-win, they’ve seen so many 3-1s and so many other stuff, that you want to get a stranglehold of this series as quickly as possible. And the Clippers had that against the Denver Nuggets and they just couldn’t closeout. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part of this was the fourth quarter of Game 7 when they went full Chernobyl. They went full meltdown, there was nothing left. Like, I’m telling you, I’m just standing there and the media was behind me, and you’re just watching. I turned around to see everyone’s face and they’re like ‘what is going on’. We had not seen a meltdown like that since Chernobyl,” Jefferson said.
All jokes aside, the fact that the Clippers imploded that way when they were the most overpowered team in the league was shocking, to say the least.
Not to take anything away from the hard-fighting and resilient Denver Nuggets but the Clippers were up by double digits many times after being up 3-1 and just couldn’t get the job done. Now, hopefully, Tyronn Lue will finally be able to get them over the hump.
