Los Angeles Clippers
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Los Angeles Clippers, American professional basketball team based in Los Angeles that plays in the Western Conference of the National Basketball Association (NBA).
The franchise was originally based in Buffalo, New York, and was known as the Buffalo Braves upon joining the NBA in 1970 alongside fellow expansion teams the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Portland Trail Blazers. The Braves posted losing records in each of their first three seasons before running off three consecutive winning campaigns that also resulted in postseason berths behind the standout play of guard-forward Randy Smith and future Hall of Fame center-forward Bob McAdoo. The Braves were part of an unusual franchise swap in 1978, when the owner of the Boston Celtics, Irv Levin, a Californian, wanted to move the Celtics to his home state but was prevented by the NBA from moving the historic franchise. As a compromise, the owner of the Braves, John Y. Brown, traded franchises with Levin, who relocated his new team to San Diego for the 1978–79 season. Then known as the San Diego Clippers, named for the sailing vessel, the franchise was one of the worst teams in the league during its six-year stay in the city, finishing in either last or second-to-last place in each season.
In 1981 the Clippers were sold to Donald Sterling, a Los Angeles-based real estate mogul, who moved the team to his home city in 1984. The team did not fare any better in its new home, finishing with a losing record in each season from 1984–85 to 1990–91. In 1991–92 the Clippers, led by forward Danny Manning, posted a 45–37 record and advanced to the Western Conference playoffs, where they lost in their first-round series. Following a .500 regular season the next year, the team again lost its opening postseason series. The Clippers returned to their losing ways in 1993–94, which began a stretch in which the team placed last in its division eight times in 11 seasons through 2003–04.
A ray of hope for Clippers fans came in 2005–06, as a promising squad featuring forward Elton Brand and center Chris Kaman won 47 games and advanced to the second round of the playoffs, but they lost a seven-game series to the Phoenix Suns. Even this limited success was short-lived, and the team fell back to a last-place divisional finish two years later. The Clippers under Sterling’s ownership were often cited as the worst franchise in North American professional team sports, with just two winning seasons in the 27 years after moving to Los Angeles in 1984.
The Clippers made the most dramatic improvement effort in team history shortly before the 2011–12 season, when the franchise traded for superstar point guard Chris Paul. That season Paul teamed with young All-Star power forward Blake Griffin to help the Clippers advance to the conference semifinals. The Clippers bettered that regular-season result in 2012–13, tallying a then team-record 56 wins and winning the first division title in team history, but lost in the opening round of the postseason. That playoff loss spurred a coaching change, and during the offseason the team brought in Doc Rivers, who had coached the Boston Celtics to an NBA championship in 2007–08. In the following season Rivers guided the Clippers to a new franchise record for wins (57) and a second division title.
During the first round of the 2013–14 playoffs, the Clippers organization was thrown into disarray when an audio recording surfaced that contained racist statements made by Sterling—who, in his capacity as a real estate businessman, had been sued a number of times over the years for alleged discriminatory housing practices. The league then took the unprecedented measure of banning him from associating with his team or the league in any capacity for life. A series of court battles between Sterling, his wife, and the NBA ensued. Ultimately, Sterling’s wife sold the team to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in August 2014 for $2 billion (a record at the time for a North American sports franchise) after Sterling was removed from his majority ownership position when he was ruled mentally incapacitated after displaying signs of Alzheimer disease.
The Clippers posted another solid regular-season record in 2014–15 and won a dramatic seven-game first-round postseason series over the defending champion San Antonio Spurs only to see its campaign ultimately end in disappointment when the team squandered a three-games-to-one series lead in the next round to the Houston Rockets. In 2015–16 the team posted its fourth straight campaign with at least 50 wins but was met with disaster in the playoffs when Paul and Griffin each had season-ending injuries in the Clippers’ fourth postseason game, and Los Angeles once again did not progress past the opening round of the playoffs. The Clippers had another 50-win campaign in 2016–17 and stumbled in the playoffs, a seven-game loss in the opening round. That elimination was historic, as the Clippers became the first team in NBA history to lose for five straight seasons a postseason series that it had at some point led. Paul left the team during the following offseason, and Griffin was traded away months after signing an extension with the team. The Clippers six-season playoff streak came to an end in 2017–18. A Clippers team consisting of career role players surprisingly returned to the postseason in 2018–19, where Los Angeles lost a hard-fought opening-round series to the defending champion Golden State Warriors.
In the summer of 2019 Los Angeles made a dramatic bid to upgrade their talent when they added star forwards Kawhi Leonard—fresh off a championship run with the Toronto Raptors—and Paul George to the team. In their first season together, the new roster won 49 games and qualified for the postseason. There they lost a dispiriting seven-game series in the second round to the Denver Nuggets, and Rivers was replaced as head coach by Tyronn Lue in the offseason. The Clippers again reached the playoffs after the 2020–21 season, reaching the Western Conference finals for the first time in franchise history. However, in a harbinger of more injuries to come, Leonard had a partial tear in his ACL that caused him to miss the series, and the team lost to the Phoenix Suns in six games.
Leonard ended up sitting out the entire 2021–22 season, during which George and other players also missed numerous games as a result of injuries and illness, and the team finished out of playoff contention. The Clippers sought an infusion of energy by signing former MVP Russell Westbrook near the end of the regular 2022–23 season. They made the playoffs as a fifth seed but lost to the Suns in the first round amid more injuries to Leonard and George. Just several games into the 2023–24 season, the team traded for another former MVP, this time guard James Harden. Between mid-November and January, the Clippers went 21–6, the best record in the league over that span, and they seemed poised for a chance at the title. But yet another knee injury to Leonard derailed their plans, and the team was eliminated, again by the Suns, in the first round of the playoffs. In the offseason George left the team in free agency.