National Basketball Association

How the LA Clippers dodging the Lakers in the NBA playoffs could backfire

Published May. 18, 2021 7:58 p.m. ET

By Martin Rogers
Fox Sports Columnist

It was a masterful piece of execution, specifically targeted toward a precise goal, and the LA Clippers ended up getting exactly what they wanted.

Now they get to sit and watch – and hope it doesn’t blow up in their faces.

The Clippers tanked. There you go, we said it. Late in the season, with a real and present shot at moving into the No. 2 spot in the Western Conference and with top position not infeasible, they decided that the grass looked greener further down the ladder.

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With the Los Angeles Lakers seemingly headed for the 7-seed, Tyronn Lue’s Clippers seemed to figure that the opposite side of the bracket would confer a rosier path to a deep postseason run, and boy, did they pull it off.

It wasn’t easy. If you’re going to tank, you’d better be all-in, and they were. They went 4-6 down the stretch. Only three teams in the West had worse records during that period, and the Clippers lost to both of those, too.

They slipped beneath the Denver Nuggets , and finally, to finish the job, they had to lose to the Houston Rockets and the Oklahoma City Thunder on Friday and Sunday.

Such things are not simply accomplished, especially when the Thunder were in the midst of their own mega-tank, having won once in their previous 24 tries. But when you rest every major contributor on your roster, as the Clippers did, that’ll help. And when you don’t foul when you trail by three with 30 seconds left, that’ll pretty much lock it in.

"We talked about it as a staff and as an organization," Lue told reporters. "The best thing for us is now that we have everyone pretty much healthy, we want to go into the playoffs with our guys as healthy as possible."

Wink, wink. We get it, Ty.

Here the Clippers are, with their prized No. 4 seed, but oops, what happens if it all goes wrong for them on Wednesday? Because for all the intricate planning and deliberate positioning, it certainly can.

Forget about shaming the Clippers for their tank, as some have opted to do this week. They did what is permitted in the NBA’s structure and took advantage of the system.

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Sure, you can say that with Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, the Clippers shouldn’t be afraid of anyone.

But it was their choice. They didn’t want to play the Lakers, and they tried to avoid that possibility. The problem is that it might all go awry, and there’s nothing they can do about that.

For we have to remember that this isn’t a typical postseason. The Lakers aren’t locked in at No. 7 — that’s just the position in which they found themselves once 72 games were up. LeBron James & Co. will face the Golden State Warriors on Wednesday as the NBA’s Play-In Tournament gets underway. The 7-spot goes to the winner, and the loser must then face the winner of Memphis-San Antonio for No. 8.

All of which makes a couple of things somewhat confounding. Everyone seems to be talking as if the Lakers are a slam dunk to win that game and move straight into the playoffs. The Clippers, apparently, operated under that assumption.

At home, the Lakers will be the favorite but hardly an overwhelming one. According to FOX Bet, LeBron & Co. are priced at -188, while the Warriors are at +145.

The Warriors, behind a red-hot Stephen Curry, fresh from claiming the NBA scoring title, can throw everything into flux.

"When it comes down to one game I would say Steph is a little bit more dangerous [than LeBron]," FS1’s Kevin Wildes said on "First Things First." "LeBron can do more things, but can [Steph] shoot the lights out and singlehandedly carry his team to a victory they are not supposed to have? Yes."

If Golden State wins and assumes the No. 7 place in the bracket, everything the Clippers did will have been for nothing, assuming the Lakers then survive a second-chance play-in game to clinch eighth position.

That scenario would mean both L.A. teams, Luka Doncic’s Dallas Mavericks and the Utah Jazz, owners of the league’s best record, would be sandwiched in the same part of the bracket.

Wondering if Curry is motivated to make a statement in a play-in game of mouthwatering importance? You’d better believe it.

"Any team [LeBron] has been on, our careers are connected because we’ve played at the highest level," Curry said. "You expect greatness. That’s the part I’ve enjoyed so much in playing in Finals against him. Those games that matter, it brings out another level of excitement and a sense of urgency about it. [This] is the same kind of scenario in a different kind of situation."

In some ways, in the interests of basketball, a Warriors win over the Lakers might be the best outcome. The NBA has made it a point to alleviate its tanking problem at the foot of the standings by reworking the way the draft lottery operates.

Tanking for playoff position is a newer phenomenon, one that has sprung up partly because home court advantage matters less when there are few, if any, fans in the stands.

If the Clippers’ ploy backfires, it would surely sting for Leonard and George, whose combined tenure in Tinseltown hasn’t exactly gone to plan the past two seasons.

But it might also send a message that losing in the name of winning can be a self-defeating exercise.

Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports and the author of the FOX Sports Insider Newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.