The Los Angeles Clippers are no doubt legitimate title contenders this season after acquiring Kawhi Leonard and Paul George last month. It seems like for the first time in their history, they have a realistic shot at winning the championship.
But that isn't true.
From 2012-2015, the Clippers were already one of the best teams in the Western Conference. Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, and DeAndre Jordan formed the core of what has been dubbed as the franchise's ‘Lob City' era. Yet as talented as they were, they were not able to win a single championship.
Jamal Crawford, one of the team's key reserves, was recently a guest at Jeremy Mills Podcast, where he said that the main reason why the Clippers didn't win a championship during the peak years of the Lob City era was because of their lack of mental toughness (15:00 mark).
Crawford may be right on this one.
The Clippers had the chance to make it to the Conference Finals in 2015. They already had a 3-1 series lead against the Houston Rockets, yet they were unable to close the series out. It was an utterly disappointing postseason run for a team that had a lot of potential.
If this year's Clippers succeed in winning the championship, the franchise's hard work all these years. Still, that will not erase the truth that their Lob City era ended without a championship to validate their existence. In the end, it will just go down in the history books as a team that underachieved.
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