Getty Kawhi Leonard defended by Andre Drummond.
If the Los Angeles Clippers keep playing like they are, their season is going to be over very soon. They are down 0-2 to the Dallas Mavericks and don’t appear to have an answer for Luka Doncic. However, this could’ve all been avoided had they ended the season as the third seed in the Western Conference.
The Clippers should’ve been able to stay at No. 3 but for a moment, it looked like the Lakers could move up to the sixth seed. That meant that a clash between the two Los Angeles teams would’ve happened in the first round. The Clippers ended up losing to their last two games and dropped to the fourth seed. It didn’t really matter due to the fact that the Lakers stayed as the seventh seed.
The fact that the Clippers lost their two games to the two worst teams in the Western Conference in the Oklahoma City Thunder and Houston Rockets led to many speculating that the team tanked to avoid the Lakers.
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Insider Confirms Clippers Tanked
It’s hard to imagine a legit winning NBA team would tank to avoid their biggest rival. Last year, the Clippers talked a very big game and ended up embarrassing themselves. This year, they could end up looking a lot worse. Everybody can speculate about the Clippers tanking until they’re blue in the face but it appears we now have confirmation. According to Chris Broussard, the Clippers did intentionally tank.
“The notion about Shannon [Sharpe] and I making this up about the Clippers tanking to avoid the Lakers,” Broussard said on Fox Sports’ Undisputed. “I texted somebody who would know, Skip [Bayless], last week and I was like, ‘Man, I keep hearing that the Clippers tanked to avoid the Lakers. There’s no way I believe that. That can’t be true.’ I got the text back from a person that would know that, totally true, and he didn’t like it. He was ‘bad karma,’ all that. I believe it. They didn’t want the Lakers. I’m not saying they wouldn’t have been scared of them in the conference finals, but for whatever reason, they didn’t want them early. That’s what I’m told.”
.@Chris_Broussard received a text confirmation from a source who would know that it’s “totally true” the Clippers tanked to avoid the Lakers 👀
This Could End up Being a Disaster for the Clippers
The irony in this is that if the Clippers stayed put as the third seed, they would’ve ended up playing the Portland Trail Blazers in the first round – a team that they beat all three times they played this season. The Clippers are now facing a Mavericks team that simply appears to be better. Had they played the Trail Blazers, they likely would’ve gotten out of the first round.
Now the Clippers are on the verge of getting swept by a lower seed in the first round. That would be the absolute worst possible scenario for the team. Heads already rolled over last season’s collapse. If Los Angeles ends up worse than they did last season, things will get really ugly for the struggling franchise. Kawhi Leonard and Paul George once looked like the next great superstar duo in the NBA, but it’s fair to question how long that pairing might last.
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