It's now two years in a row that the Los Angeles Clippers saw their championship hopes come to an end in the first round of the playoffs. In 2023, they came crashing and burning against a Phoenix Suns team as they were unable to weather their injury problems. And now, in 2024, they went down quietly in six games against the Dallas Mavericks, as, you guessed it, they were yet again plagued by insurmountable injury woes.

For a team with four future Hall of Famers, a first-round exit is as bad of a way to bow out of the playoffs as it can get. The Clippers now have a long offseason ahead of them as they prepare to open the Intuit Dome era, and before that, they'll have to assess the team with a thorough retrospective of what went wrong in yet another disappointing season for perhaps the unluckiest franchise in NBA history.

Kawhi Leonard and the injury bug that never seems to leave

In horror movies, dread is a common theme. Fear is most palpable when there is a presence of both hope and the inevitability of tragedy. The scariest films tend to nail the feeling of, no matter how hard one tries, they are subject to forces beyond their control and have to grapple with the grief that comes with accepting this reality.

The Clippers may be that kind of movie you would only watch once and never ever entertain the thought of watching again after being scarred by the time the end credits roll along. But for some reason, there are plenty of avid fans of the horror movie that is the Clippers franchise who think that somehow, someway, the ending would change when it was already set in stone from the get-go.

Clippers fans are allowed to have hope, but all this hope leads to is heartbreak, and nothing typifies this more tragically than Kawhi Leonard's inability to shake off the injury bug.

For the first time since the 2016-17 season, Leonard was able to play over 60 games. He suited up in 68 games, proving his doubters wrong as the league enforced a 65-game minimum to be eligible for postseason awards. Leonard was even scorching hot in the middle of the season as he led the Clippers to an amazing 26-5 stretch in the middle of the season that had fans calling them one of the best contending teams in the association.

Even though the Clippers slipped into a rough patch following the Grammy trip, there was confidence that come playoff time, they would figure it out. Leonard missed the final eight games of the regular season due to knee soreness, but again, some thought that it was merely for precautionary reasons and for resting purposes in preparation for the playoffs. And what delusional thoughts those ended up being.

Leonard, indeed, was dealing with a serious injury. He was due to return at some point during their series against the Mavericks, but his sharpness was in question. After all, he hadn't played since March 31. But of course, the Clippers won Game 1 in convincing fashion, upping the fanbase's hopes yet again as they felt that the team would handle business against the Mavs when Leonard returns.

Surely enough, Leonard returned. But he was clearly not 100 percent, as he didn't have a ramp-up period and a full practice before playing in Game 2. His knee didn't respond well, and he was so limited in Game 3 that he played in just 24 minutes. He then proceeded to miss the final three games of the series as the Clippers fell.

All the hope surrounding the Clippers franchise and fanbase came crashing down, washed away by the sobering reality of the inevitability of the degenerative condition of Leonard's knee. Not a single team in the NBA would win the championship if their best player isn't healthy. The Clippers are no exception. Such is the reality of the NBA; you can look across the history of the league and not find a single team that shocked the world and won it all with a shorthanded team.

But when your best player is chronically injured, like Leonard is for the Clippers, then holding on to hope may be futile. They will have no choice but to run it back next season; they could let Paul George walk, but is that really worth it? George has frustrating moments, but the Clippers have no way of improving upon the roster due to their lack of trade assets, cap space, and quality young players if they let him walk.

At the end of the day, Clippers fans will be back next season with renewed hopes. They will talk themselves into believing that, maybe, this is the year that Leonard manages to stay healthy for the entirety of the playoffs. But it should come as a shock to absolutely no one when we're all back here in May 2025 talking about the inevitability of the demons the Clippers couldn't seem to exorcise.

The Clippers' veterans run out of gas

Changing of the guard has been the theme of the 2024 NBA playoffs to this point. The stars of yesterday, such as Stephen Curry, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant, had already bowed out of the playoffs. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Damian Lillard, Joel Embiid, and Jimmy Butler all joined them soon thereafter, and now, the Clippers' quartet of stars may be already booking trips for Cancun.

The Clippers, without Kawhi Leonard, simply did not have enough to get past the Mavericks. James Harden did his best, but he's already 34 years old, and he's no longer capable of pushing the pace like he used to. His pace is rather deliberate these days, but the Mavericks' ball-pressure turned this into a problem, as the Clippers were slow in getting to their offensive sets and were forced, on plenty of occasions, to barf up contested shots with the shot clock dwindling.

Harden is no longer the finisher he was in his prime; this has led to fewer fouls drawn, fewer three-point attempts, and fewer points generated. It's unfathomable to see a Harden-led offense struggle the way they did against the Mavericks, but with Harden not applying too much rim pressure, instead preferring to go to his float game (he also became more passive after that magical Game 4), it's not too big of a surprise to see the Mavs choke up the Clippers offense in the series.

Meanwhile, Paul George seemed to have used all his Playoff P energy in Game 4; he shot 4-13 in Game 5 and 6-18 in Game 6, and he couldn't gain much separation from Derrick Jones Jr. off the bounce or even coming off screens. Jones' athleticism swallowed George whole for most of the series; George is 34 years old, so it's not like he's going to get faster or more athletic from here on out.

Harden and George's athletic decline led to an inability to get to the paint, and with an inability to get to the paint comes an inability to manufacture great looks from the field. The Clippers, more often than not, settled for contested jumpshots. It's a testament to how locked-in the Mavericks defense was that LA, apart from Ivica Zubac, barely posed a threat to them on the interior.

And then there's Russell Westbrook. Westbrook is a future Hall of Famer who had a bit of a revival upon his arrival on the Clippers last season. He even played his heart off in their first-round loss to the Suns last year. But the 2024 playoffs is something Westbrook would much rather forget — or remember if he wants to hammer home in his mind the fact that he has to be better.

Westbrook shot 13-50 from the field in the series — he went 8-42 in the final five games of the series — and that is not a shooting performance that any team can survive, especially against a good team in the Mavericks. Father Time may be having a stranglehold over the Clippers, and it led to their eventual demise.