Superstar club-building doesn't always pan out
Clippers gave up so much for Kawhi and PG, only to collapse in Game 7 against Nuggets
Kawhi Leonard's departure from the Toronto Raptors was very much in keeping with the modern NBA.
A superstar chose his destination, in this case ticking three boxes: big market, good weather, hometown. He even managed to bring an All-NBA running mate with him, one who, in a nod to the times, had to force his way out of a team to which he was under contract.
It was only in the finer details that the Leonard move started to look a little weird. He didn't choose the Los Angeles Lakers, the glamour franchise led now by LeBron James, one of the greatest players ever. He went to the neighbouring Clippers, the awkward stepchild of L.A. franchises that had never been to even a conference final in almost 50 years of existence. He chose as his wingman Paul George, an undeniable talent who had injury troubles, had not been out of the first round of the playoffs in four years and who had won only three of his previous 15 post-season games.
He was moving from the East to the much deeper West. It was said that he wanted to play for coach Doc Rivers, who had a title on his resume but also an 84-83 playoff record at the time and was 20-26 with the Clippers, including a humiliating three straight losses to blow a 3-1 series lead a few years earlier. Bit of foreshadowing there.
The Clips had given up two players and seven draft assets — SEVEN — to secure the services of Leonard and George for just two seasons.
Despite all of that, it still looked OK a week ago. The Clippers had been oddly inconsistent all season, in part because Leonard and George missed their usual amount of games. They had underwhelmed against the Dallas Mavericks in the first round of the playoffs, with George in particular having some nights of woe, but sorted themselves out enough to take a 3-1 lead against the Denver Nuggets and needed just one more win to get to a Lakers-Clippers conference final that everyone had pencilled in since July of 2019.
And then, disaster. It is not just that the Nuggets won Game 7 for their third straight victory, 104-89, to eliminate the Clippers. It is how they won those games. Los Angeles had a halftime lead in each of them. In Game 5, the Nuggets won the second half by a score of 67-49. In Game 6, they won it 64-35. And in Game 7, when the presumed title contenders needed to show a little moxie, much like Leonard and the Raptors had done repeatedly a year earlier, they scored all of 33 points in the second half while giving up 50 to the Nuggets. Seven of their 15 fourth-quarter points came in the dying moments, after Leonard and George had been pulled.
If there was a signature play of that Game 7 performance, it was George taking a three-pointer from the corner that clanked high off the side of the backboard, a shot that would have missed if the hoop was the size of a kiddie pool. If there was a signature sequence, it was Denver's Jamal Murray, good Canadian, nailing a tough three late in the fourth quarter, and then Leonard immediately turning it over for a breakaway dunk the other way.
Rivers, the coach for whom Leonard wanted to play, has now overseen three collapses from a 3-1 series lead. No other NBA coach has done that twice. That weather system you see moving out from southern Ontario toward the west coast is a massive front of schadenfreude.
Here is the point where it is worth noting some significant caveats. The Clippers' collapse did not take place in normal times. They join the Raptors and the Milwaukee Bucks as top-two seeds that did not make it out of the second round in Orlando, where the home-court advantage that top teams would normally enjoy was eliminated. The Clippers have another chance to make good on their on-paper talent next season, which will (hopefully) not be as bizarre as this one.
But, given that the NBA is gearing up for another of those superstar off-season carousels after the 2021 season, one in which several big names will be available including Leonard and George, it's worth wondering if the ignominy of the Clippers' exit has set the league's player-empowerment era back just a touch. The franchise threw itself at the feet of Kawhi, giving up valuable current and future pieces in the hopes that a team with two great players would be enough for a deep playoff run. It's an argument that goes back to LeBron's move to Miami, or even the Boston Big Three that Rivers took to a title: get some stars, and everything else will work itself out.
Except when it doesn't. Houston and Philadelphia have each suffered playoff failures in consecutive years, with different combinations of max-contract players. Milwaukee has Giannis Antetokounmpo, the closest thing to Basketball Thanos, but has lost twice now to teams whose biggest advantages against them were depth and coaching.
The Clippers have just struck another blow for the concept of careful team building. Or, rather, the Nuggets did. sstinson@postmedia.com twitter.com/Scott_Stinson