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INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) — The Los Angeles Clippers’ days as the biggest losers in professional sports are long gone, and this NBA All-Star weekend was supposed to be a time to celebrate it.
The team that spent its first four decades of existence as a punch line and a purgatory has now had 14 consecutive winning seasons with a succession of basketball greats wearing its uniform. After decades of playing in dingy gyms from Buffalo to San Diego to downtown Los Angeles, the Clippers now hold court in a lavish, futuristic new arena built by the richest owner in professional sports, Steve Ballmer.
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Yet perhaps it’s cosmically appropriate for this crowning All-Star moment to arrive in the middle of a profoundly chaotic season for the Clippers, whose newer fans have been getting a taste of the bad old days from a team that once spent almost every year mired in some kind of mess.
“We’ve dealt with a lot this year,” Clippers guard Kris Dunn said last week. “Our whole mentality throughout the year has just been to try to find a way. It’s been tough.”
The season began under the cloud of an NBA investigation into a suspicious endorsement deal for superstar Kawhi Leonard which might have been a way for the team to circumvent the salary cap — and which infuriated front offices around the sport, no matter what the league eventually decides. Leonard, Ballmer and president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank all deny wrongdoing, but the Clippers could face penalties if the league disagrees.
The Clippers then got off to a shambolic 6-21 start during which they shockingly kicked franchise icon Chris Paul off the team just six weeks into the 40-year-old point guard’s much-anticipated farewell season.
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A couple of weeks after Paul’s banishment, coach Tyronn Lue’s Clips improbably started winning again, with James Harden and longtime center Ivica Zubac stepping up alongside Leonard to lead a 16-3 surge back into the playoff race.
But then Frank blew up his roster last week, trading Harden to Cleveland and Zubac to Indiana. The moves likely improved the long-term outlook for a team that began the…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/no-longer-losers-clippers-still-232335254.html
Author : GREG BEACHAM
Publish date : 2026-02-11 23:23:00
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