On Monday, the LA Clippers played their first home game of the month against the Memphis Grizzlies. It was a notable day for the fanbase, the first game the Clippers were playing at Intuit Dome after the banishment of 40-year-old franchise legend Chris Paul.
When the game started, the combination of LA鈥檚 record (only six wins), the game time (a Monday night during football season), opponent (a Grizzlies team with a losing record) and logistics (a game that wasn鈥檛 on the schedule until NBA Cup group play concluded) made it look like Intuit Dome would struggle to sell out:
When the game ended, with the Grizzlies blowing the Clippers out 121-103 despite both Kawhi Leonard and James Harden playing, the remaining fans booed, an unfamiliar sound for the home team in recent years. But those boos felt more like sounds of indifference, not anger, which is a bad place to be for a squad that entered camp with hopes of contention.
From the Aspiration scandal to Paul鈥檚 surprising exit to languishing at the bottom of the Western Conference, the Clippers aren鈥檛 just underachieving. They鈥檙e not just regular bad. This season has been a catastrophic black eye with no redeeming qualities.
When I heard those boos Monday, I remembered attending a game at the Paycom Center in Oklahoma City during what ultimately proved to be Paul George鈥檚 final season with the Clippers in 2023-24. Two years ago, the Clippers brought a nine-game winning streak into Oklahoma City, where it was snapped. The following February, after the All-Star Game, the Clippers returned to get blown out again. Before the game, Oklahoma City fans had light boos for Leonard and heavy boos for former Thunder Sixth Man of the Year Harden during starting lineup introductions. But they cheered George 鈥� as they should have.
George played two seasons with the Thunder, with both seasons resulting in one-and-done playoff runs. The second of those two seasons, 2018-19, was George鈥檚 career year. He finished third in both MVP and Defensive Player of the Year voting while making his only All-NBA first-team selection. It was the only season that George led the league in steals (2.2) and the only season that George has averaged more than 25 points per game (28.0).
Oklahoma City parlayed George鈥檚 peak season into the NBA鈥檚 version of the Herschel Walker trade, a transaction so lopsided and consequential over time that it spawned the Dallas Cowboys鈥� 1990s dynasty and has its own page in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. At least the Minnesota Vikings got some draft picks out of that 1989 deal. All the Clippers got in 2019 was George, at the behest of incoming reigning NBA Finals MVP and unrestricted free agent Leonard. The Thunder received control of seven Clippers first-round picks, including pick swaps in 2023 and 2025 and unprotected firsts in 2022, 2024 and 2026. They also received one year of starting power forward Danilo Gallinari and 2018 Clippers lottery pick Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
That George trade didn鈥檛 really start embarrassing the Clippers fanbase until 2022-23. That鈥檚 when Gilgeous-Alexander became an All-NBA player, despite the Thunder not quite being a playoff team yet. George鈥檚 last visit to Oklahoma City as a Clipper was in a season that represented the shutting of LA鈥檚 realistic championship window; the Thunder narrowly earned the West鈥檚 top seed in 2024 while the Clippers failed to win a playoff series. The Clippers had an inspiring and overachieving 2024-25 season despite George鈥檚 defection to the Philadelphia 76ers, but the Thunder became champions, with former Clippers backup center Isaiah Hartenstein as a starter and Jalen Williams becoming both an All-NBA and All-Defensive selection. (Williams was drafted with the lottery pick the Clippers donated as a result of missing the 2022 postseason.)
This was supposed to be the final season of the George draft-pick payment to the Thunder. Giving up a non-lottery pick is one thing. Even with the embarrassing Aspiration scandal threatening to apply real harm, depending on what any potential punishment may be, the Clippers had always won in the regular season with owner Steve Ballmer, president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank and head coach Tyronn Lue in their respective positions. Leonard and Harden had always played on teams that made the playoffs. The floor was supposed to be 42 wins, which would extend the league鈥檚 longest active streak of winning seasons to 15.
It hasn鈥檛 worked this year. Before November injuries to Bradley Beal (season-ending), Leonard (multi-week), Derrick Jones Jr. (may return around the new year after missing more than a month) and Bogdan Bogdanovic (injured pretty much all of 2025), LA showed disturbing floor levels in October losses at Utah and Golden State. Now, after losing by 21 in Oklahoma City on Thursday, the only team with fewer wins than the Clippers is the Washington Wizards.
So now, the Clippers will play back-to-back home games for the first time this month, against two of the West鈥檚 best in the Los Angeles Lakers on Saturday and the Houston Rockets on Tuesday. Saturday鈥檚 game against the division-leading Lakers will be another touchstone moment in a despairing season. The Clippers, particularly under Lue, used to dominate the Lakers. Ballmer prefers wins over them more than any other team.
If the Clippers don鈥檛 compete Saturday in an arena that will surely have more than 17,927 seated, and LA ends this weekend in last place in the West, then it may be time for Ballmer to address an aggrieved fanbase and speak on the direction of his team.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.