You very likely recall the Steve Bartman Game, and how a Chicago Cubs team felt the weight of a curse that was nearly 60 years old in 2003 and is 70 years old today.
You probably also recall the Curse of the Bambino, the hex which dogged the Boston Red Sox for over 85 years.
The Detroit Lions and Cleveland Browns haven’t won pro football championships in over 50 years. The St. Louis Blues have never won a Stanley Cup in almost a half-century of NHL competition.
Curses, hexes, spells — they’re so easy to laugh off, because the present moment can always create its new reality. A coach or a team isn’t considered very good… until winning a title. The past can mean everything… until it doesn’t. Today’s players and coaches do not have to be held back by previous generations of a franchise’s foremost figures. As soon as a new achievement is forged, decades of old narratives instantly fall away.
And yet…
You watch the Steve Bartman Game or the Grady Little (Red Sox-Yankees) Game from 2003, and wonder when a team’s run of stomach-punch moments will ever end.
You watch the Blues lose another Game 5 at home in a 2-2 playoff series and wonder when that organization is ever going to travel in the right direction.
You watch the Lions get jobbed by the officiating against the Dallas Cowboys in the NFL playoffs and wonder when that team will make its first Super Bowl, becoming the final NFC team to make pro football’s biggest event.
You watch the Los Angeles Clippers gack away a 19-point lead in the final 14 minutes of a homecourt close-out game against the Houston Rockets on Thursday night, and wonder when the Clippers will stop being… the Clippers.
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Donald Sterling.
Elgin Baylor.
Michael Olowokandi.
Bill Walton.
Game 5 last year against Oklahoma City, blowing a large lead in the final two minutes of the fourth quarter.
The Los Angeles Clippers knew they had to overcome off-court distractions, the laughter of opponents — especially Laker fans — and their past in 2015. Doc Rivers had to coach better. Blake Griffin had to play better. The bench had to do just enough to get by.
Through 12 full playoff games and 34 minutes of their 13th postseason contest, the Clippers had shown themselves to be a new team, one worthy of crashing through the barriers that have stood in this franchise’s path.
Los Angeles defeated the San Antonio Spurs — the defending champions — in a high-level first-round series. The Clippers’ bench played unexpectedly, uncommonly well. Austin Rivers starred in a road win against the Spurs in Game 4. The Clippers won again on the road (Game 6) when facing elimination. In Game 7, nearly the whole bench starred while Chris Paul suffered a hamstring injury. The bench kept the game close enough for Paul to hit a remarkable winning floater with one second left in regulation. The Clippers showed more resilience in that one series than they had revealed in their entire history in Southern California, dating back to 1978.
Surely, after thumping the Houston Rockets on the road without CP3 in Game 1 of this Western Conference semifinal series, the Clippers were not going to be denied.
Surely, after annihilating Houston in Games 3 and 4 in Staples Center to take a commanding 3-1 lead, the Clippers weren’t going to blow this opportunity to make their first-ever conference final.
Surely, after racing to a 19-point lead late in the third quarter of Game 6 at home — with Blake Griffin and CP3 playing at the top of their games — the Clippers were going to finish off a markedly inferior opponent. Everything about this Clipper season — overcoming the Donald Sterling mess; riding out an extended period in which Griffin was injured; handling the Spurs in a remarkably good series — manifested a newfound maturity and poise.
Unfathomably blowing a fat lead at home in a close-out game? Not this team. Not with its stars in top form. Not after beating the Spurs. Not with James Harden sitting for the Rockets. Not with a lead still at 12 points with 7:30 remaining in regulation.
Not in a logical world.
However, this isn’t a logical world sometimes.
It’s a world which makes people believe in curses.
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Chris Paul is clearly one of the three best point guards in the NBA, and very possibly the absolute best. Rajon Rondo, Deron Williams, and other players who used to occupy best-point-guard conversations in the Association have tumbled off the map. Paul remains as good as ever, if not being even better than in the past.
Griffin, Paul’s trusted sidekick, has been the best player in the 2015 NBA Playoffs — better than LeBron James, and probably still better than Steph Curry, despite the MVP’s ridiculous display in Game 6 against the Memphis Grizzlies. CP3 and Griffin have carried themselves like stars.
It must be said: If the Clippers fail to beat the Houston Rockets in Game 7 on Sunday afternoon in Houston, it won’t mean that Paul and Griffin are frauds, players who “just don’t have what it takes to be great,” or something of that nature. Reasonable sports fans should be able to acknowledge that larger contextual truth.
Yet, the question must also be asked: After choking away Game 5 to Oklahoma City in 2014 and watching Thursday’s Game 6 collapse against Houston, how many more ugly playoff defeats — preventable yet spectacular ones — can great players absorb before we look at them in a different way? One year’s failure can be chalked up to “life happens.”
Two straight improbable playoff exits, though, both set up by epic collapses? Wasn’t the lesson supposed to have been learned 12 months ago against the Thunder?
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Sunday’s Game 7 is not just a matter of advancing or going home. The Los Angeles Clippers face a game that isn’t just the biggest in the history of the franchise; it’s a game which, if lost, will leave this organization with another offseason full of burdens.
As bad as Game 5 in Oklahoma City was, the 2014 offseason was onerous not because of that playoff failure, but because of the mess Donald Sterling left behind. This season was the fresh start, but a loss in Houston would place another dark cloud over the Clippers. The problem wouldn’t be the loss of a series in itself; it would be the failure to break down a barrier, more specifically because of a choke.
Athletes have broken through before, and they’ll continue to do so. Coaches have managed to guide players past formidable obstacles. Human beings live to overcome their demons and shed their baggage. These processes have happened before and will unfold again in the future. Yet, it is also true that if athletes and teams absorb enough spectacular defeats, the task of recovering from those setbacks often becomes more difficult.
The 2003 Chicago Cubs did not regroup in 2004.
The Cleveland Browns haven’t been the same organization since losing those three AFC Championship Games to the Denver Broncos in the late 1980s and early 1990s. (Spare the Art Modell jokes; the Browns’ identity of failure lingers quite powerfully today.)
Losing in Houston would not mean that the Clippers will never again have as good a shot to win the NBA title. However, it would create a moment of pain so acute that it would open the door to a prolonged period of failure and frustration.
Maybe a loss in Game 7 would convince Doc Rivers of the need to make certain necessary changes that will bear fruit for the Clippers in future seasons. However, living with humiliations and the constant questions they generate is just the sort of thing that has kept many sports teams from realizing their potential.
Curses are for simpletons… well, unless the Los Angeles Clippers lose Game 7 on Sunday.
This is about more than one series and one attempt to advance to a conference final. The Los Angeles Clippers have come face to face with their reputations, legacies, and the burdens they currently carry. If they can escape Houston with a win, so many of those burdens will instantly cease to exist. If they lose, that win over the Spurs would instantly lose a large measure of its meaning.
The Clippers can make their quest for NBA riches in the Steve Ballmer era a lot easier, or a lot harder. How they perform in Game 7 won’t guarantee their long-term future… but their body of work on Sunday will certainly shape their journey, for better or worse.
