The topic was bound to come up moments after the Houston Rockets became just the ninth NBA team to come back from a 3-1 deficit to win a playoff series.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the curse of the Los Angeles Clippers is alive and well.
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"After undergoing a radical transformation, Los Angeles' reborn professional basketball team added to its sordid history Sunday, struck down by a 31-year curse disguised on this day as the Houston Rockets," Times columnist Bill Plaschke reported in the afterglow of the Clippers' 113-100 loss in Game 7 after enjoying a three-games-to-one lead.
"Mere weeks after the greatest victory in franchise history, they ended their season Sunday crushed by the weight of one of the greatest collapses in L.A. sports history."
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Indeed, the Clippers were the same team that took down the defending NBA champion San Antonio Spurs in a first-round seventh game - but that was in L.A.
The Clippers have been trying to seize Los Angeles from the storied-but-now-struggling Lakers and appeared poised to do so this year. But they blew a 19-point lead late in the third quarter of Game 6 and never recovered.
Clippers forward Blake Griffin didn't want to hear any curse talk, Larry Brown Sports reported.
"The 'Clippers Curse' when I first got here was No. 1 picks getting hurt, not working out, their draft picks not working out, they're not making the playoffs; they're not having winning seasons. Nobody talked about not getting past the first round (of the playoffs). Not a single soul talked about that. But now, that's what everybody talks about," Griffin responded.
"Just like the last one, we're going to bust through this one."
It is interesting to note that the current edition of the Clippers became relevant when they acquired Chris Paul from the New Orleans Hornets in 2012, but that was after the NBA mysteriously voided a Paul trade to the Lakers.
Ironically, the Lakers were the last NBA team to lose a 3-1 series lead - in 2006 to the Phoenix Suns. But two years later, they went to the NBA Finals and won titles in 2009 and 2010.
So there's always hope for the Clippers, even if it doesn't feel that way right now.
"You hate to equate sports with, like, death, but it does feel like a wake, or a funeral right now," said the Clippers' J.J. Redick.
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