Most of you neutral NBA fans out there are probably hoping that Golden State – with Aussie Andrew Bogut and the sublime Stephen Curry – make it to the NBA finals.
And maybe you’re hoping for a match-up with Cleveland, not necessarily because of LeBron James but because of regional Victoria’s own Matthew Dellavedova.
But let me make a case for a team that has been downtrodden for years. In fact, if you look up the definition of ‘downtrodden’ in the dictionary you might see a team photo from the mid-1990s featuring Troy Hudson and Eric Piatkowski.
I’m talking about the Los Angeles Clippers.
If you’re new to the NBA or under the age of 30, you might not know just how far this team has come.
They began life as the Buffalo Braves way back in 1970 and made the postseason just three times in eight years.
They moved west in 1978 and became the San Diego Clippers, where in six seasons they never played a playoff game.
Since 1984, the franchise has been based in Los Angeles, and the mediocrity has continued.
Not counting this season, the Clips have made the playoffs just seven times in 30 seasons. Between 1993 and 2005 they didn’t have a winning season. In the lockout-shortened 1998-99 season, the team had an abominable 9-41 record.
In simple terms, this has been a disaster of a franchise.
To make matters worse, the Clippers have played in the shadow of one of the NBA’s most glamourous and successful teams, the Lakers.
While the Lakers were selling expensive courtside seats to Jack Nicholson so he could watch Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal lead them to eight titles, the Clippers were drawing less than 10,000 fans to the dilapidated Sports Arena in a dodgy part of town.
In many ways, the franchise seemed cursed. Number one draft pick Danny Manning tore his ACL during his rookie year, Number one draft pick Michael Olowokandi was one of the NBA’s all-time great busts, and several former players have met untimely deaths, including Bison Dele, who is believed to have been murdered in the South Pacific while sailing with his brother.
Even in recent times, as the team began building towards respectability, the bizarre moments kept on coming.
Number one draft pick Blake Griffin became another victim of the ‘Clipper Curse’, breaking his kneecap before his first season.
Team owner Donald Sterling, a controversial character at the best of times, was fined $2.5 million and forced out of the NBA after private recordings of his racist comments were made public. His estranged wife Shelly then oversaw a sale of the team to billionaire Steve Ballmer.
And that brings us to today, with things finally starting to go the Clippers’ way.
The team got out of the Sports Arena back in 2000 and after flirting with the city of Anaheim, became co-tenants with the Lakers at the state-of-the-art Staples Centre.
Griffin is back and growing into one of the game’s true superstars. Point guard Chris Paul already is a superstar and has made unbelievable play after unbelievable play in this year’s playoffs. His shot at the end of Game 7 eliminated the defending champion Spurs.
Head coach Doc Rivers has been much maligned, and even mocked now that he’s coaching his son Austin, but both Rivers Senior and Junior have risen to the occasion, and the Clips are one game away from eliminating the Houston Rockets and reaching the Western Conference championship series.
Needless to say, the franchise has never made it that far before.
If you’re looking for a bandwagon to climb on, the Clippers aren’t a bad choice. It’s hard to dislike Paul and Griffin, and big man DeAndre ‘Mr 40 per cent at the free throw line’ Jordan is one of the league’s hardest workers.
There’s sharpshooter JJ Redick, one of college basketball’s most hated players when he starred for Duke and Matt Barnes, a journeyman who can play good defence and hit big shots.
There’s Glen ‘Big Baby’ Davis and a couple of Seattle guys who couldn’t be more different – benchwarmer Spencer Hawes and scoring machine Jamal Crawford. There’s even old-timer Hedo Turkoglu, the first Turkish-born player in NBA history.
Now I know it’s hard to consider a team from Los Angeles an underdog or a feel-good story. This is Hollywood, the land of plastic faces and phony smiles, where fair-weather fans roll in late to games and head out early to beat the freeway traffic. But this is truly a resurrection and a reversal of fortune.
If the Clippers can close out the Rockets, they’ll make franchise history and set up a Western Conference finals match-up for the ages with either the Warriors (last NBA title in 1975) or the Grizzlies (only been to the conference finals once).
At times like these, I think of my friend Robert, a bartender and wannabe actor in LA. He was smart and talented, but he had one flaw that everyone used to laugh about – back in the glory days of the Lakers, Robert was a Clippers fan. This year he may be the one doing the laughing.
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