We all saw how the Los Angeles Clippers bowed out of the 2015 NBA Playoffs.
It wasn’t just the act of losing what had been a lead of nearly 20 points. It wasn’t just the act of losing a 12-point lead in roughly eight minutes. It wasn’t just the fact that the Clippers had been relatively unbothered in the first five games and three quarters of this series. It wasn’t just that Los Angeles blew Game 6 on its home floor, roughly two weeks after beating the defending champion San Antonio Spurs on that same floor in a Game 7.
The worst and most embarrassing aspect of the Clippers’ loss — the loss which didn’t eliminate them, but essentially prevented them from making the first conference finals series in franchise history — was that the Houston Rockets’ comeback was achieved with James Harden sitting on the bench. Corey Brewer, Josh Smith, and other role players powered a rally which overwhelmed Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan, J.J. Redick, and the rest of a team which was supposed to take the next step.
Were the Golden State Warriors lucky to not have to play the Clippers in the 2015 Western Conference Finals? Of course they were. Yet, let’s acknowledge this: In sports, the presence of luck might exist beyond dispute, but the way in which luck emerges should also be considered and absorbed.
Realize this about tournaments of any sort: It’s one thing to avoid playing a given opponent because that opponent lost in a previous round, but it means something different when that feared (or more difficult) opponent loses because it didn’t play well.
It’s not as though Houston needed to play transcendent basketball to beat the Clippers; “transcendent” better describes the Clippers-Spurs series, in which Doc Rivers’s team truly had to reach deep inside itself and play special basketball in order to knock out the champs. That series wasn’t lost by San Antonio’s failures so much as it was won by Los Angeles’s virtues. Houston-Clippers was the opposite. Los Angeles, in complete control, served up a paralyzed fourth quarter in Game 6 at home, with Harden sitting on the pine, when one pedestrian quarter would have been enough to get the “conference finals” monkey off the franchise’s back.
This does mean something, folks — if the Clippers were taken out by a nearly untouchable version of the Rockets, despite playing well, one could say that the Clippers were legitimately threatening and yet somehow failed to meet the Warriors. However, given the way Los Angeles faltered, the cold and unforgiving but accurate truth of the matter is that the Clippers didn’t deserve to play the Warriors. They had everything set up the way they wanted it, and they couldn’t take advantage.
That’s more than the Warriors being lucky; that’s a manifestation of the reality that the Warriors went about — and finished — their business relative to the Clippers and every other team in the West.
The Clippers, to put the point more precisely, didn’t lose on a lucky shot or a bad call. They lost because they blew it, in much the same way that they blew Game 5 against Oklahoma City in the second round of the 2014 playoffs. Had the Clippers lost to Houston in the way the Dallas Mavericks lost to the Miami Heat in Game 5 of the 2006 Finals, or the way in which the Sacramento Kings lost to the Lakers in Game 6 of the 2002 West Finals, the idea that the Clippers were unlucky would be magnified. Accordingly, the idea that the Warriors were lucky would be magnified as well.
That did not happen. The Warriors shouldn’t be thought of as a lesser champion or a conspicuously lucky team (relative to any other chanpion which has gotten lucky) because of what the Clippers did or didn’t do. It’s easily the worst and most unfair part of the still-active “Golden State was particularly lucky to win the 2015 title) discussion.
*
Now here comes Doc Rivers, bothering to wade into these waters… for what purpose, I have absolutely no idea.
Rivers told Zach Lowe in a recent Grantland interview, “You need luck in the West. Look at Golden State. They didn’t have to play us or the Spurs.” Golden State players tore into Rivers for those remarks, and so on Saturday, Rivers had to walk back his earlier statement:
“I actually referenced my team when we won it. … You have to have luck to win,” Rivers said. “Now, clearly, it bothers them for whatever reason. That part I could care less about. But it was worded wrongly to them. If someone had said we were lucky in Boston, I’d have been upset, too. I get that.”
Forget the fact that Rivers felt he had to clarify himself. Forget the specific distinction above about a team not advancing in the playoffs because it was worse than its opponent, not because the opponent was necessarily better.
The worst aspect of Doc Rivers’ comments on the subject of the Warriors’ luck is that Doc felt moved to comment at all in the first place. What possible good can come from saying an opponent was lucky, after your team memorably failed in the postseason and that opponent won its first title in 40 years? Even if the point was nuanced; even if the words were precise; even if no harm was meant, the mere attempt to address the subject — from Doc Rivers’ point of view — makes absolutely no sense.
Doc Rivers the coach made life harder for Doc Rivers the GM. He gave the reigning champions of the league and his won Western Conference even more motivation to beat the Clippers into the ground this season.
When you’ve never made a conference final and need to get everything right this next season, you shouldn’t risk inspiring your foremost source of opposition in any way.
Doc Rivers failed grandly in this regard.
That’s so Clippers.
What’s up, Doc?
