There’s been a lot of hand-wringing about the fact that future Hall-of-Famer Chris Paul has never made it past the second-round of the playoffs, and it’s a blemish on an otherwise stellar NBA resume that will surely haunt him until overcomes it, if he ever does.
Perhaps the most searing indictment on Paul – and for that matter, Paul-led teams – came in the 2015 Western Conference semifinals against the Rockets when the Clippers blew a 3-1 lead and saw their Finals aspirations go up in smoke. Not only did the Clippers blow a 3-1 lead, but they did so in spectacular fashion, losing each of the final three games of the series by at least 12 points.
It was such a spectacular meltdown that many inside the organization believe the core group as a unit (Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, and DeAndre Jordan) were never been able to recover from it and that it was the source of Lob City’s eventual dissolution this summer.
“It’s hard to shake something like that,” Griffin says. “A cloud hung over us.”
Some in the organization say that implosion frayed the fabric of the team in ways that are hard to see, or even verbalize — ways you just feel. When things get tight again, do you trust the man next to you?
“Players start looking at each other’s faults instead of covering for each other,” [Clippers coach Doc] Rivers says. “When we lost to Oklahoma City [the year before], we were fine. No one cared what others on the team couldn’t do. It was fresh. I was new as coach. They were listening. They were following. But the next year, you fall apart again. Maybe you still want to be coached, and to play together, but you also want to try out different things on your own. That is the natural progression of a team growing apart.”
Much has been made about Paul’s rocky relationship with his other star teammates and his coach, but perhaps that loss to Houston has been the actual dark cloud Griffin referred to looming over Lob City all this time and led to the apparent shaky relationships in the locker room between the top stars.
Paul has an opportunity to put those criticisms to bed this season, but his new running mate, James Harden, has his own demons to exorcise after his own collapse against the Spurs last postseason. Paul’s current injury is delaying that process, and after a somewhat dicey start in the first few games, it’s still very much in the air.
(ESPN.com)
