NBA Sunday: Can the Clippers Bounce Back?

As the Golden State Warriors celebrate their championship and bask in the glory that follows the ending of their 40-year championship drought, the most natural question for many NBA onlookers becomes whether or not the team will be collecting championships in abundance over the next few years or whether they will ultimately go down as a team reminiscent of the 2004 Detroit Pistons—one who seems to have snuck in and stolen a championship, only to be broken up before winning again.

During the NBA Finals, no doubt, Doc Rivers and Chris Paul were thinking about the fact that they had a 3-1 series lead on the Houston Rockets and, somehow, squandered it after failing to appropriately respond to the adjustments made by Rockets head coach Kevin McHale.

The question that now arises for the Clippers is whether or not the experience of being thwarted in that manner will cause them to crumble, or harden them and make them better.

Clearly, Rivers has been eager to get to work to plug what seems to be the final holes on his roster and perhaps put his team over the top. With the acquisition of Lance Stephenson and rumors of Paul Pierce potentially joining the Clippers, DeAndre Jordan and his impending free agency now comes squarely into focus as the Clippers begin a summer that will have monumental implications as to whether this franchise will remain a contender or take a step back heading into the 2015-16 season.

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At the beginning of the playoffs, Chris Paul was the subject of an NBA Sunday, which laid out the case for him, questioning whether or not he would ultimately go down in history as being an “inlier” amongst his peers or whether he could fulfill his potential and become a basketball monarch. The San Antonio Spurs series, it was said, was one that Paul had to find a way to win. Another first round exit would have been another black mark on his resume that would be difficult to ignore once it was all said and done for him. Although he took matters into his own hands and scored a memorable series-clinching shot in Game 7 of that series, for Paul, the dubious distinction of being the captain of a ship that squandered a 3-1 series lead is not something that will soon be forgotten.

That is, of course, unless the Clippers can erase the painful memory with a more glorious one.

It has been 11 long years since the Los Angeles Lakers and Shaquille O’Neal mutually decided that it would be best for them to part ways. Long before LeBron James did, O’Neal took his talents to South Beach and immediately transformed the Dwyane Wade-led Miami HEAT into a championship contender. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Kobe Bryant faced questions about his legacy, about his ability to be the leader for a championship team and even as to why he “chased” O’Neal out of town.

After putting together a 56-26 record over the course of the 2003-04 season, the Lakers would win the Western Conference for the fourth time in five years. Overnight, with the departure of O’Neal, the Lakers became the epitome of mediocre. Over the ensuing three years, the team would win 34, 45 and 42 games, respectively.

All throughout those years, Bryant was regarded by most people as a very gifted Robin. As O’Neal and Wade led the HEAT to the franchise’s first championship in its history in 2006, Bryant and his 45-win Lakers would do exactly what Paul’s Clippers just did before our very eyes.

Led by Bryant, Lamar Odom and Kwame Brown, the Lakers had somehow managed to defeat Steve Nash’s Phoenix Suns in three of the first four contests of their first round matchup in the 2006 Western Conference playoffs. Being the seventh ranked team, the Lakers were on the verge of pulling off a shocking upset and sending Steve Nash home early, despite being a back-to-back reigning Most Valuable Player.

Instead, the Suns rediscovered the crisp ball movement and shooting that had seemed to have been lost on them over the course of the first four games of the series and they managed to come back and stun Bryant’s Lakers, eventually prevailing in a Game 7 wherein many believe that Bryant, out of frustration and a want to prove a point, quit on his team.

Bryant would tell you that this was one of the darkest moments of his career. Still searching for the respect that he felt he deserved for being one of the navigators of the three-peat not far removed, the fact that O’Neal had succeeded in Miami without him and that Bryant was not having similar success with the Lakers darkened and hardened him.

It was that same search that led Bryant to eventually requesting a trade from the Lakers. Instead, though, Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak managed to eventually get him a major reinforcement in the form of Pau Gasol. Within two years, thanks also in part to the development of Andrew Bynum, the Lakers went from wallowing in the muds of mediocrity to once again being the cream of the Western Conference.

After Gasol’s arrival and two more championships, we have absolutely no memory of what the years between the departure of O’Neal (2004) and the Lakers reemerging as a contender (2008) were like for Bryant. There are some prolific scoring performances, sure, but during those years, Bryant seemed destined to go down in history as just another Robin. Had his career ended prior to the arrival of Gasol, the legacy he left on the game may have been more reminiscent of Dominique Wilkins, except for the fact that Bryant had championship rings.

Still, history would have told us that Bryant’s jewelry was a direct result of his being teamed with Shaquille O’Neal. Nobody saw the late-night shootouts or the two-a-day sessions that Bryant led in those early years with the Lakers. Nobody would talk about how his youthful arrogance and cockiness and energy helped to propel a team that depended primarily on veterans to become a champion.

Yet, just a few years later, Bryant has joined the conversation with Magic Johnson as being the greatest Laker of all time.

Can something similar happen for Chris Paul?

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The night is darkest just before the dawn.

As Paul turns the corner and begins to see the light at the end of the tunnel, he knows that his immense talent and potential is championship-worthy. During the course of the first round series against the Spurs, Paul admitted to being more nervous than he had ever been during any playoff series prior to that point. He admitted to having trouble sleeping, even.

In a few of his standout performances, even a bum hamstring couldn’t thwart him.

The prevailing sentiment as it concerns Paul and his Clippers is that the team and the franchise have enough talent to win a championship. The things that are stopping them, at least it seems, are mental. As a unit, the Clippers still seem to cry and complain a little bit too much when calls are not going their way. As a unit, they seem to lack the toughness required of a team that will, no doubt, face bruising battles along the course of their journey.

For Rivers, the challenge is to somehow plug those holes, keep his team motivated and keep them unified. The most important thing, however, is to keep them believing in themselves and in one another.

Then after that? Rivers must do his job by recruiting talent and continuing to put the appropriate pieces in place in the ever-competitive Western Conference.

The acquisition of Stephenson is one that could yield high rewards, though the risk taken is probably greater than most realize since Matt Barnes was such an important part of the team’s success this past year.

The potential signing of Paul Pierce would give the Clippers a Hall-of-Fame talent who, last season, proved that he still has a lot left in the tank and that he could certainly be a lynchpin of a contender.

The free agency of Jordan, though, is where the hopes of the Clippers remaining a contender truly rest. As an unrestricted free agent, Jordan could leave Paul and Rivers high and dry, and he could do so with them getting nothing in return.

That the Clippers are coming off a season that was ended by them squandering a 3-1 series lead only yields more questions.

As Mitch Kupchak did for Bryant’s Lakers back in 2008, it is time for Rivers to answer some all-important questions. Five years from now, will we look back at the Summer of 2015 as when the Clippers, led by Paul, used their gut-wrenching experience in these playoffs as fuel and motivation to what ended up being the fulfillment of championship potential?

Or will we simply look back at it as the one where Rivers let it all get away?

As the Warriors celebrated their championship about 400 miles northwest of Los Angeles, Rivers only needed to look down the hall at the Staples Center for a reminder that, sometimes, even in the NBA, the night is darkest just before the dawn.

And as a new day emerges, the Clippers enter the summer of 2015, staring at a road that diverges. Which path they take from this point? We do not know. But what we do know is that by the end of the summer, they will have emerged from the woods.

Either battle-hardened or time-worn—the Clippers are on the clock.