In a grotesque overreaction, the Clippers cut ties with Bruce Bowen. Bowen is a San Antonio Spur lifer who the Clippers hired as a color analyst last summer. In his playing days, Bowen was often called a dirty player. His gritty defensive aura netted him three rings before he retired in 2009. He worked for…
Chris Paul has been here before. Trying to get to the Conference Final. Three years ago, he lost to the Houston Rockets in a massive choke job, blowing a 3-1 series lead. Seven years before that he was up 3-2 over the Spurs, played almost every minute in game 7 at home (New Orleans) and…
On the first Saturday in April, DeAndre Jordan was denied a playoff run. The last time he missed the playoffs was in 2011. It is a strange set of circumstances for Jordan, who is the lone remaining member of Lob City. On the day Jordan was eliminated from making the playoffs, Chris Paul’s team lost…
Rasual Butler joins the sad list of NBA players who played for the Los Angeles Clippers and died prematurely, all before the age of 45. Late Wednesday morning, the Los Angeles coroner confirmed that Butler and his wife Leah LaBelle were killed in a “horrific” car crash in Studio City. Butler’s Range Rover barelled out…
A decade after the Clippers moved to Los Angeles, a bitter joke began to make the rounds of the season ticket holders at the Sports Arena where the Clippers routinely tortured their fans. The joke that everyone loved to repeat was that the Sports Arena was built on the site of an Indian burial ground.…
Six years ago, on a Wednesday in December, New Orleans traded 26 year old Chris Paul to the Los Angeles Clippers. It was a seminal moment in Clippers franchise history, the acquistion of a top-10 talent to help reverse the curse of a franchise that was pathetic and catastrophic with a ridiculously ignorant (and racist)…
Word that Pat Beverley was out for the year because of microfracture surgery would have been major news, despite the hit in the gut, had it not been overshadowed by something far greater and more specific. It was the revelation that the Clippers waived the physical of Beverley before trading for him, a physical that may…
Los Angeles is a pretty bland basketball town now that Chris Paul has left. Blake Griffin is as quiet as mouse and most of his teammates are chill dudes who don’t make waves. Across town, the Lakers biggest personality is not even a player but the father of a player. It’s a perfect storm for…
Two summers ago, when a chagrined Mark Cuban said his team was better off without DeAndre Jordan, the Clippers center, who had agreed to leave Los Angeles for Dallas and then changed his mind, there were skeptics who rolled their eyes. After all, Cuban was trying to save face in an embarrassing moment played out…
The L.A. Clippers have lost Chris Paul and with him, their identity. The Lob City era is over. Unfulfilled expectations linger and the fear of irrelevancy has taken hold. This is what happens when a team is assembled with incredibly high expectations and fails to deliver time and again as the Clippers have. The four…