On Wednesday night it was announced the New Orleans Hornets traded Chris Paul to the Los Angeles Clippers, in-exchange for Eric Gordon, Chris Kaman, Al-Farouq Aminu and Minnesota’s unprotected 2012 first-round pick.
Now, Los Angeles’ “second best team” has one of the NBA’s best small players in Paul and one of the best big players in All-Star forward Blake Griffin. Given this newly formed duo of Paul and Griffin, the Clippers will have something surrounding them this season for arguably the first time since the franchise moved to Los Angeles: Expectations.
Paul and Griffin are now the youngest, most exciting duo in the NBA. They are sure to provide hours of highlight reel material and are likely to lead the Clippers to the postseason for the first time since the 2005-06 season.
While the expectations the team will face this season are warranted, it’s silly for anyone to make them lofty expectations.
I am sure there were NBA fans who claimed today the Clippers will be the West’s top seed, win three straight championships and basketball fans in L.A. will soon be forgetting about stupid, old Kobe Bryant and the Lakers.
But exciting plays and talent don’t always translate to success. After all, Paul played with another All-Star caliber forward the last few seasons in David West, who may not be as talented as Griffin but is probably more skilled, and the Hornets were largely an average team.
On the other hand, there are people who think the Clippers are in some way “cursed” and are destined to be a cellar dweller no matter who’s on their roster.
Which means there are fans today who are predicting a terrible injury to cripple either Paul or Griffin, or oft criticized owner Donald Sterling will do something to ruin the “one good thing” that has ever happened to the franchise.
But if one is to ignore the extreme expectations from both ends of the spectrum, it’s apparent the team has finally found a “happy medium” of sorts.
Clippers fans can now hopefully forget the team’s embarrassing past, not get too excited over the unrealistic expectations that are surely to manifest in the coming days and enjoy what they have been craving for a long time: a respectable basketball team.
Joshua Sexton is a lifelong basketball fanatic, who watches as many games as possible. In addition, He has played and coached the game at the high school level. He has recently started writing about the game of basketball.
