They catch each other’s passes, finish each other’s sentences and often appear to read each other’s minds on the basketball court.
Chris Paul, Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan couldn’t be closer if you jammed them into the back seat of a Kia hatchback.
For three seasons now, the Clippers trio has also become intimately familiar with something else: unhappy endings.
There was a first-round playoff cameo sandwiched between two slightly longer forays into the second round, results that raised questions about the threesome’s collective resolve.
“That’s the truth,” Paul recently said of the early playoff demises and accompanying blame. “It doesn’t matter if it’s fair or not. That’s a huge deal, especially to me and us as a team.”
Championships are not a birthright for young teams, no matter how talented. Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook were in their fourth year together with the Oklahoma City Thunder before they reached the NBA Finals. They still haven’t won a title.
The Clippers are counting on the stability of having Coach Doc Rivers and six of their top seven scorers back from last season to leave behind the parade of criticism in favor of the summer procession around Staples Center that would come from their first NBA championship.
It all starts with a core that is entering its fourth season together.
“If you look at all the really good teams of the ’80s and ’90s, they stayed together for six, seven, eight, nine years,” said sixth man Jamal Crawford, who is entering his third year with the Clippers. “The continuity and chemistry, they had seen just about everything and they knew how to handle adversity, and I think that’s what we’re working toward.”
This represents the first time in Paul’s 10 NBA seasons that the primary starting lineup returns intact from the previous year, not counting the departed Jared Dudley since he was relegated to the Clippers bench for most of the second half of last season.
Paul described the summer as merely “a long All-Star break” because of the familiarity among players.
“You come back in and everybody sort of remembers the plays,” Paul said, “and then you have things that worked last season and you have things that you talk about and you know each other.”
Being considered one of the NBA’s top trios isn’t enough for Griffin, Paul and Jordan; each player continues to evolve in his pursuit of something more meaningful than what he can accomplish individually.
Griffin, 25, spent most of his summer in a high school gym in Manhattan Beach after finishing third last season in voting for the league’s most-valuable-player award. The power forward has increased the range on his jump shot and is striving to become a first-team all-defensive player.
Jordan, 26, wants to reprise his role from last season, when he was the NBA’s top rebounder and a feared shot blocker. Any offense the 6-foot-11 center can contribute outside of lob dunks or put-backs is a bonus.
“You won’t see me out here trying to shoot fade-away threes or telling somebody to come pick me to come off for an elbow jump shot,” Jordan said.
Paul, 29, still has two things to prove even though the league’s general managers just selected him the game’s top point guard in their annual survey. He has never played a full season’s worth of games — missing an average of 12.7 games over the last three seasons — or made it past the conference semifinals.
His performance in Game 5 of last season’s Western Conference semifinals against Oklahoma City was the stuff of evil-clown nightmares. Paul committed two turnovers and fouled a three-point shooter in the final 15 seconds of a collapse in a one-point loss that will surely haunt him until he can cradle the Larry O’Brien championship trophy.
The Clippers were infused with some experience in that department with the addition of Jordan Farmar, the backup point guard who won two titles with the Lakers. Their frontcourt got significantly deeper with the arrival of Spencer Hawes, who can man both the center and power forward positions while playing starter’s minutes off the bench.
The team also picked up a highly voluble fan in Steve Ballmer, the new owner who has championship expectations for a franchise that has won 38.2% of its games since its debut in 1970.
There is a belief among the Clippers’ newcomers and the core of the team that player banners may not be the only thing to soon hang from the rafters inside Staples Center. Paul demands it.
“I’d probably hurt somebody in here if they didn’t think they had a chance” to win it all, Paul said.
If the Clippers had their way, it would be the playoffs starting Thursday, not the regular season. They know that a third consecutive Pacific Division title and another franchise record for victories will not impress anyone, least of all themselves.
The season that really matters comes in April, May and June. Paul, Jordan and Griffin want to get there before the winter of their careers.
“This window is not open forever,” Griffin said, “so we always want to take advantage of it.”
Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times
