All of us—NBA fanatics, analysts, casual onlookers—absorb the league with a soft spot that occasionally doubles as an irredeemable flaw. Bear traps of belief. For the past five years, mine was the Los Angeles Clippers, a convulsing roller-coaster ride that numbed my senses, weakened my knees, and distorted what it means to feel hope in a reality that provides fleeting evidence that any exists.

Call them cursed, a hapless ne’er-do-well that can’t succeed regardless of how bright the path they’ve chosen appears to be, and you might be right. The Clippers have won a grand total of zero playoff series since they reached the 2021 Western Conference finals, their deepest run in franchise history.

And yet, despite their long-standing inability to enjoy the type of fortuitous edge that regularly touches so many of their competitors—i.e., they’ve endured more poorly timed injuries than just about any team I can remember—in their darkest hour I saw light, repeatedly becoming the Ah shit, here we go again meme. Since 2019, I’ve picked the Clippers to win the NBA championship in just about every season (last year I predicted the Celtics would beat them in the Finals).

There are several reasons why. None mattered more than Kawhi Leonard, an inscrutable lodestar who’s been betrayed by his own body over and over again. When healthy—an increasingly demoralizing caveat for the 33-year-old—Leonard can be a tectonic-shifting winner, all-powerful enough to stoke dreams and then rip them away. And for most of his tenure with the Clippers, he’s had plenty of help.

Paul George—also when healthy—is the platonic ideal of a copilot, someone who steps on the floor with zero exploitable weaknesses and numerous unteachable strengths. In tandem, Kawhi and PG formed a foundation. A shaky one, yes. But when they shared the court, L.A.’s championship ambition was bona fide. Around them, Ty Lue’s tactical brilliance, Steve Ballmer’s mega-rich stewardship, a boldly proactive front office, and logical role players at just about every position gave the Clippers more than a realistic chance to thrive at the highest level.

For many people, all that substance devolved into an illusion several years ago. The Clippers were perennial disappointments harboring a humongous budget and a hollow core. I was not one of those people, mostly because I stubbornly clung to proof that didn’t stop suggesting they were really good! Before yet another knee injury sidelined Leonard in last year’s first-round loss to the eventual Western Conference champion Dallas Mavericks, the Clippers won 51 games and finished seventh in net rating. Kawhi made second-team All-NBA, and PG had the most efficient season of his career. They were the only teammates who ranked top 10 in estimated plus-minus, and lineups featuring that pair with James Harden outscored opponents by 10 points per 100 possessions. (By comparison, the reigning champion Boston Celtics’ three biggest stars, Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, and Kristaps Porzingis, sported a plus-10.2 net rating together.)

My fever peaked last February, when the Clippers looked as formidable as they ever had. It broke a few months later, after another postseason letdown collided with second apron scaries to form the straw that broke the camel’s back. In addition to even more questions about Leonard’s health—lingering concern from the knee injury that limited him in last year’s playoffs was reportedly why Team USA sent him home before the Olympics—the Clippers must also contend with George’s decision to sign with the Philadelphia 76ers. Their breakup was simultaneously avoidable and inevitable, seemingly submerging the Clippers in precariousness.

In a Western Conference that’s overstuffed with hopeful contenders and punchy upstarts, Los Angeles has no clear way to swerve back into the championship conversation. How it got here matters. What it is is fascinating. The Clippers just let one of the league’s great two-way talents walk away for nothing, but they should not be left for dead, which is what’s signaled by their 40.5-win over/under projection in 2024-25. This group can still be competitive enough to make the playoffs. They have pedigree, continuity, athleticism, and experience. They will defend. They will be organized and creative. And while they won’t have the same star power, they can benefit from a clearly defined hierarchy.

The headlines from their offseason concern who went out the door: George and Russell Westbrook (whose departure is addition by subtraction). But Nicolas Batum, Derrick Jones Jr., and Kris Dunn are three intriguing and important names coming in. With those skill sets in the fold, the Clippers are essentially trying to pivot back to who they were in 2021 and 2023, with Harden replacing George as the second option (and a more natural fit beside Leonard) in front of several rangy 3-and-D wings. There’s length, versatility, and nastiness (Dunn and Terance Mann will raise the blood pressure of opposing backcourts).

For the regular season, sometimes less is more. When healthy (drink), the pecking order is straightforward, and the pieces fit. Streamlining an identity won’t be complicated; discovering a consistent nightly rotation shouldn’t be as challenging as it’s been the past few years.

After being on the wrong end of this summer’s biggest free agent decision, L.A. scraped together a roster that does a decent job accentuating two aging Hall of Famers who will need to produce like All-Stars. It’s far from a guaranteed outcome, but it isn’t unrealistic. Harden is 35. If the Clippers get who he was before the All-Star break, averaging 17.5 points and 8.4 assists in 48 games with a whopping 64.1 true shooting percentage, they’ll be in excellent shape this season. If they get who he was after the All-Star break, averaging 14.8 points and 8.8 assists in 24 games with a 55.4 true shooting percentage, it will be a rocky ride.

The Beard is no longer an MVP candidate capable of averaging 34 points per game, as he was five years ago, but those playmaking chops die hard. He led the league in assists per game in 2023 and finished fourth last season. Those out on Harden as a dependable, high-usage ball handler also have his shot profile to blame. Last year, a career-low 19 percent of his field goal attempts came at the rim. It’s a steep drop from the player who combined an explosive first step with shamanistic ballhandling to feast at the basket. But in a role sans George—PG’s 16.7 shots per game have to go somewhere!—Harden will be asked to attack more than he has in several years, which should call to mind what he was asked to do for the Houston Rockets and Brooklyn Nets. That’s not a bad thing.

Last year in isolation, Harden was the fifth-most efficient player out of 69 who logged at least 100 possessions that ended with a shot, foul, turnover, or pass to someone who finished the play. And when he ran a pick-and-roll, the Clippers generated a tremendous 1.09 points per possession, per Synergy.

The pieces around Harden and Leonard are sensible enough to create myriad feasible lineup combinations. Defense will be a strength. But overcoming some compositional issues that make the roster seem incomplete will be a challenge. The frontcourt is bare: Behind Ivica Zubac, the only traditional big is Mo Bamba, which essentially means the Clippers will be hampered if Zubac gets in foul trouble and screwed if he gets hurt. Lue will go small in certain spots with PJ Tucker, Kobe Brown, or Batum at the 5, but none of those options are sustainable or appealing.

And when Harden is on the bench, what shape will L.A.’s offensive identity take? Will Lue have him start the second and fourth quarters to commandeer bench units or opt to tie his minutes to Leonard’s? Can Norm Powell supply enough punch off the pine? Is Dunn, Mann, or Bones Hyland the backup point guard? Given Kevin Porter Jr.’s looming legal concerns—including potential discipline from the league—and history of troubling behavior, the decision to sign him to a two-year contract was feeble and desperate for a team that doesn’t have many avenues to acquire young talent on the cheap.

But the Clippers have a workable combination of intelligence and skill in place. Batum’s game blends craft with a deadeye jump shot. Powell is a perennial Sixth Man of the Year candidate. Dunn is one of the most aggravating on-ball defenders alive. Jones is a vertical threat who made 37.1 percent of his spot-up 3s in last year’s playoffs and is a downfield target in transition. The group will badly miss George’s universal ability. But there’s an opportunity here for the Clippers to treat the regular season as a lab, designed to hone self-discovery through sheer resilience and exertion. If all breaks right, their best-case scenario is more fulfilling than what every other team jockeying for a playoff spot can muster.

The Clippers fractured in such a dramatic, certain, and public way before everything their talent promised could come to fruition. Their unwillingness to pay George what common sense suggested he was worth created this polarizing fork in the road that makes what they are now, floating in purgatory, so captivating—finally free of great expectations yet still dragged down by the heavy toll of what it cost to construct their initial colossus. They have no choice but to forge ahead using everything that’s left over, which includes an all-time great player who’s often injured and has a flat persona that effectively emits disinterest and insulation—two qualities that aren’t typically inhabited by a “locker-room leader.” Of course it could be a disaster. A house built on surgically reconstructed meniscus.

But Leonard’s game doesn’t just talk; it booms from a pulpit, commanding attention. His muscle, intuition, and boundless fluidity make him a dutiful problem solver who, when backed into a corner, has enough authority and repose to grind a square peg into a round hole and make it appear no meaningful resistance was applied. He’s a threat everywhere, with the ball or not. Last year, Kawhi’s 1,613 points were the second most he’s ever scored in a season; he also dunked the ball 76 times and recorded a 62.6 true shooting percentage, which were both career highs. There’s a good chance his prime isn’t close to through.

Harden might be productive enough to make his 11th All-Star team. Jones, Batum, Powell, Zubac, Mann, Dunn, and Amir Coffey might coalesce around those two stars, expanding in unexpected ways to help fill the void George left in his wake. Lue might take the ingredients in front of him and extract more flavor than any other coach could. The Intuit Dome will erase some schedule-related setbacks that used to make everyone’s life a smidgen less comfortable. The era-encumbering push and pull between rest and compete should be less of a concern without a Finals run on the horizon.

Can they catch lightning in a bottle, à la the 2023 Miami Heat, and make a run no one sees coming? Probably not. But their collective talent, experience, and frustration could make this iteration a surprising success story. Even though it’s nothing close to what they hoped for and envisioned in the summer of 2019, finally, the Clippers may be able to look in the mirror and see an overachiever staring back.