The LA Clippers are getting ready to play a game that we were much more excited about a couple weeks ago. A matchup with the Utah Jazz was set to be a battle of two of the Western Conference giants.
And it still is that, just, one of the giants has been cut down quite a ways. Without Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, it’s hard to get too excited to see the LA Clippers face off against a juggernaut in the Jazz. Sure, we always want to see the Clips play, but this is an uphill battle.
No matter what, we shouldn’t get too excited or too bummed about the LA Clippers’ results vs. Utah.
This isn’t a “we’re gonna lose, so go ahead and pack it in” sort of piece. I think there’s a serious possibility that the reserves pick up the win for us. But I will take just as much away from the game if the LA Clippers win as I will if they lose. Which is, very little that’s directly related to the result.
If the Utah Jazz beat the LA Clippers tonight, nobody rational will take it to mean anything if the two teams match up in the postseason. Exactly zero predictions can be made based off of a team missing both of its superstars losing.
And likewise, if the LA Clippers beat the Utah Jazz, it’s almost certainly not because the Jazz are a worse team than the Clips sans Kawhi and Paul George. It would probably be because they didn’t take a team missing its best players seriously.
That’s not to say there’s nothing to look into tonight. Just, probably not the final score. I’m excited to watch Terance Mann and see if he keeps his good run going. I’m excited to see if Luke Kennard carries his solid performance from last game over into this one. How do our bigs perform against Rudy Gobert?
But again, all of those could come out encouraging for the LA Clippers and the score could be lopsided in favor of the Jazz. I know that it’s easy to take a bad loss seriously, or to get very encouraged by a good win, but we probably shouldn’t be focusing too much on the results of the game.