| 13 January 2011
Is the Los Angeles Clippers curse over? This might seem like a silly time to ask this, what with the team's current 13-24 record, but make no mistake about it - things are looking up in Clipperland. In fact, I started writing this article even before they knocked off the Miami Heat last night. The Clippers are actually one of the hottest teams in the NBA currently, going 7-3 over their last 10, including victories over the Nuggets and at Chicago. These are heady times for a franchise that has only made the playoffs seven times in its 40 years of existence.
Of course all talk of the Clippers (possible) resurgence starts and stops with rookie phenom Blake Griffin. Much was expected from the first overall pick of the 2009 draft, but he has far exceeded what everyone predicted for him, to the tune of 22 points, 13 rebounds and three assists per game. While the comparisons to Karl Malone are inaccurate, it might only be due to the fact that Griffin is far more athletic than The Mailman every was. But it's not just Griffin, as Eric Gordon (another player who has become a better NBA player than projected) provides an athletic outside threat to Griffin's inside force. In fact, four out of the five most regular starters for the Clips are 21 or 22-years-old - the "old man" of the outfit being 28-year-old Ryan Gomes. Griffin, Gordon, DeAndre Jordan, Eric Bledsoe, Al-Farouq Aminu - this team is stacked with young talent.
You can actually draw a lot of parallels between the Clippers and the Oklahoma City Thunder a few years back. Griffin-Gordon can be the superstar inside-outside combo like Kevin Durant-Russell Westbrook are for OKC, with the rest of the team stocked with young, athletic, hungry players with "upside". Plus there's no chance L.A. is going to make the playoffs this season, so they'll be adding another lottery pick talent to next year's roster. You can seriously envision this team becoming a playoff force a year or two down the road. But this team will never truly take off until they can unload overpaid, underperforming veterans Chris Kaman and Baron Davis and totally turn the reigns over to the young bucks.
But this is the Clippers we're talking about, afterall, so none of these positive projections are bound to happen. What's more than likely to happen is owner Donald Sterling loses Blake Griffin in a poker game, Eric Gordon gets lost in Baron Davis' beard, never to be heard from again, and the rest of the team comes down with the Bubonic plague. Then all will be right in the universe once again.
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