Paul George gives explanation for Clippers' failures last season

LA Clippers fans are still trying to forget how the end of this past season went down. The opening of Intuit Dome and the beginning of a new era of Clippers basketball has provided plenty of excitement that has largely been helpful in numbing that pain away.

But looking back on it, things were not pretty. After becoming one of the best teams in the NBA record-wise in the winter, the Clippers' success slowly began to melt away with the coming of spring. Kawhi Leonard playing his final regular season game at the end of March in Charlotte led to LA dropping four of their last eight contests leading up to the playoffs.

By then, they were looking like a shell of the team that dominated their competition throughout December and January. So what exactly happened that led to this sudden drop-off in level of play? Paul George recently went on his podcast and gave his account of why things went south so quickly for the Clippers.

George began his story by answering a question that asked him to answer what his favorite part of this past NBA season was. He went over the James Harden trade and how the team struggled mightily when the former MVP first arrived, but then things changed and a winning streak ensued.

Paul George thinks the Clippers peaked at the wrong time

"We started figuring it out," George said. "Then we go through a stretch of like a month, month and a half, where we were just playing extremely high-level basketball. And I think it was now at that point where people were jumping on the bandwagon. Like this team is for real now. They're serious, they found their rhythm.

"And just that stretch, going on the floor with your brothers. Being out there with Russ, [Kawhi], James, Big Zu, the whole squad. Being out there with them, it was a presence that it felt like we were gonna win every time we touched that floor. So I think that was the highlight, because you can't bottle that up.

"I wish you could bottle that up and be like, 'you know what, we figured it out, let's hold off and take this to late April, early May.' I feel like we peaked out, teams figured us out, and it was downhill from there." This account certainly seems to line up with what fans saw from afar.

The Clippers seemed like an unstoppable machine throughout much of this past winter. They were utterly dismantling teams when they were at their best, even winning at the eventual NBA champions by 19 points on January 27.

But unfortunately, there are still ebbs and flows within a season, and keeping up the same exact level of play for a long time is extremely difficult. Peaking too early is absolutely a real thing in the NBA, and it is certainly easy to see the Clippers team we saw in January go further than the first round in the playoffs.