Sports are relentlessly cyclical.
Hope survives briefly in the offseason while despair and short moments of relief consume the rest of the calendar year. This emotional ride is consistent for millions of people, but every year, millions get back on that same ride hoping this time, they won’t get sick.
Only one team and one fan base achieve true happiness every season. Only one team gets to survive the ride with its health intact. That is the aspect of professional sports that makes them an inherently idiotic thing to attach emotions.
Human nature makes winning an expectation. That is why wins simply feed that natural craving for a moment. Winning is assumed, yet guaranteed to no one in sports. Even worse, losing is just as likely.
This is why regular-season wins and, for the lucky minority, playoff wins, will never be enough. The season will end the same way most of the time, and yet it’s impossible to not get back on the ride and impossible not to get emotionally attached. That is why it continues to entice millions every single year.
The Los Angeles Clippers were ready to get back on this repeatedly tumultuous ride early in the year. Their optimism pulled them to this ride, just as it should when winning is the expectation. However, expectations and optimism can be a volatile mix. Assuming the best will occur just means any less than the best will be a disappointment.
Their preseason comments illustrated this. Danilo Gallinari told Def Pen Hoops that the Clippers “no doubt” had the “No. 1” frontcourt in the NBA when the year began.
That frontcourt, comprised of Gallinari, Griffin and DeAndre Jordan, played exactly 203 minutes together and only nine total games with one another. Griffin was traded after 33 games played, while Gallinari was injured with consistency and played just 21 games.
Patrick Beverley believed that people were “going to maybe see us three finish a lot of games together” when speaking of fellow backcourt members Austin Rivers and Lou Williams.
Those three never played together, let alone in the fourth quarter, and Beverley was ruled out for the year after just 11 games played.
Jordan was so confident in of one of the Clippers’ newest additions that he told Def Pen Hoops “it is going to be great playing with Milos [Teodosic],” before the year began.
Teodosic shuffled in and out of the lineup due to injuries, and every time it looked like he had become acclimated to the NBA, he was sidelined by some new freak ailment.
Preseason optimism is strong enough to persuade the most reasonable man, but not strong enough to produce reality.
The Clippers, despite their abundance of optimism, were taken down time and again as the season went along. The main culprit of these letdowns was injuries. Injuries will headline the Clippers’ 2017-18 season, especially when people are looking for an excuse to get back on the ride next year.
Doc Rivers spoke sharply on this issue by saying he did not believe the Blake Griffin trade was the culprit for the Clippers playoff-less season.
“I thought the injuries [were] the reason we did not make it,” he told Def Pen Hoops.
This is a commonly used justification for missing the playoffs. Players and coaches rightfully don’t want to discuss or confront the real reasons that lead to missing the playoffs because it may just outline their own shortcomings. So, instead of potentially delivering a self-inflicted blow to their career, they blame it on the luck of the draw.
For most teams, this would be a cop-out, especially in a year like this, when almost every team was hit with constant injuries. However, the Clippers were in a class of their own when it came to sustaining breaks, contusions and sprains. Most of the rosy preseason predictions were derailed because of them.
The Clippers started an incredible 18 different players during the course of the season. That is more than every single team, save for the Cleveland Cavaliers, who traded away half their roster and somehow managed to merely match that number.
Because the excuse is all the more justifiable, so is the reason for hope.
Although the Clippers’ season ended on Wednesday night in Staples Center, you could not tell by the atmosphere. Doc Rivers usually beams positive energy after every game but it was obvious that he remains excited and optimistic about the future.
“I have a lot of hope, he said. “I think we have restarted our franchise and we have done it in a way where we can still be a competitive team. We have flexibility, we have draft picks now, I think we are in a really good position.”
Tyrone Wallace, the impressive former G League player, told Def Pen Hoops that he “definitely” believed this was more of a beginning than an ending. Even Lou Williams spewed positivity after his season ended.
“We are resilient,” he told Def Pen Hoops. “We finished over .500 in a loaded Western Conference.”
Doc Rivers even said that Williams believed the Clippers would have “won 50 games” if not for their abundance of injuries, and he may be right.
The Clippers are not short on talent. Williams, Rivers and Beverley do make for a strong backcourt. Montrezl Harrell showed signs that he could be a great player for years. Avery Bradley is decent when healthy. Tobias Harris has become a bonafide scorer. If Jordan and Austin Rivers opt in, they do have a massive $108 million committed next season, but just $33 million committed the following year, along with two first-round picks this year.
Despite all of the negative energy that was thrown the Clippers’ way this season, they still have reasons to be hopeful. Right now, they appear prepared and motivated to move on. Move on to next season, move on to a more hopeful time, and move on to that ride once again because maybe this time, they won’t get sick. It is April 13 and they have already found reasons to get back on that ride.
