The Los Angeles Clippers will tip off the 2016-17 season where the last one ended: at the Moda Center against the Portland Trail Blazers.
Game 6 in Rip City punctuated yet another disappointing Clippers demise. With Chris Paul and Blake Griffin lost to injury during Game 4, the team looked to Jamal Crawford and Austin Rivers to carry the scoring load. The former came through with 32 points, the latter with 21 and a busted eye, but neither could keep the Clippers from succumbing to a series-clinching, three-point defeat.
"I had people hitting me up, like 'it took for you to get your eye blackened for people to like you,'" Rivers said at Clippers media day.
L.A., as a team, has had its fair share of detractors in recent years, but none more destructive than itself. Folding up shop after watching its top two players go down is one thing. Doing so while holding a 3-1 series lead (as the Clippers did against the Houston Rockets in 2015) or with the prospect of going up 3-2 (as they did opposite the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2014) is quite another.
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Article written by Josh Martin