How will the LA Clippers fare in the in-season tournament?

The Dream Scenario

Ideally, the LA Clippers should be expected to be the second-best team in this group, behind the Denver Nuggets. Anything else should be concerning for the Clips, barring any major injuries, given that they were 6-9 against these teams in the 2022-23 season. When you remove the Nuggets from that count, who the Clippers were 0-4 against, the advantage sits at 6-5.

Their only other real threat is the Pelicans, who went 3-0 against the Clippers last season. However, the Pelicans never saw the Clippers at full strength, with Kawhi Leonard missing one of those games and Paul George missing the other two. With the tournament starting just nine games into the season for the Clippers, health shouldn’t be too big of a factor here.

There is another factor that could contribute here: champion’s fatigue. Over the last five years, the NBA champions went a combined 22-28 through the first ten games of the following season.

While some of this is due to untimely injuries or players moving around in the offseason, much of it is due to the simple fact that teams, especially the ones poised for success in the postseason, just don’t care enough about the first handful of games in the season. The Nuggets could follow this example and drop some easy games in October and November.

With that in mind, an argument could be made that the Clippers could win their group outright, moving on to the knockout round. It’s not the best or strongest argument, as it relies on a championship team losing motivation at the start of a season, but it’s not an unreasonable one.

Of course, Denver could also follow in the steps of the Milwaukee Bucks or Toronto Raptors, who went 7-3 in their first ten games following their championship. Should that happen, there is still hope for the Clippers.