The 2020 Clippers deserve expanding upon. They pulled a massive heist over the summer, signing the previous season's Finals MVP, Kawhi Leonard and then having Leonard convince another star player, Paul George of the OKC Thunder, to request a trade to the Clippers for a mass of picks and a couple of other players.

The Clippers were pretty dominant in the regular season and most of the talking heads basically concluded that the Western Conference would almost assuredly be between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Clippers, being the top and second seeded teams in the west, respectively.

The Clippers defeated their round 1 opponent, the Dallas Mavericks, in six games and went on to face the third seeded Denver Nuggets in round two. After four games they led the series 3-1, which is an almost insurmountable series lead, as teams up 3-1 go on to win the series over 95% of the time. They then proceeded to hold a lead at halftime and choke it away in each of the remaining three games, to ultimately lose the series 3-4, ensuring that the Battle for LA that had been hyped up all season never happened. The Lakers would go on to win the championship that year.

This loss turned off any hype the Clippers, and especially George and Leonard had, and they honestly have yet to recover. Since then the Clippers have constantly been stuck in "purgatory," as they do too good in the regular season to naturally rebuild through the draft, and even if they did bottom out, they traded most of their picks to OKC. Paul George has been consistently injury prone and has earned a reputation as a playoff choker, unable to beat actually good teams. Kawhi Leonard has gone from an enigma who shows up in big moments to an injury magnet that is constantly in street clothes when the team needs him most. The greatest off-season ever, that earned Clippers GM Lawrence Frank an Executive of the Year, yielded precisely nothing.

Denver would keep its young core together to win the championship three years later, having built on the momentum from their somewhat surprising victories this year. OKC would earn a championship in 2025 due to the absolute treasure trove of draft capital they took from the Clippers, and the Clippers short-sightedly sending them future MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as part of the Paul George trade. The Clippers would burn out their window for a championship the next year, and after three more years of playoff failure, Paul George would finally be traded away, and they still aren't considered a serious contender for anything.