There is much animosity between the two Los Angeles-based NBA teams, but it would hardly be fair to call the Lakers and Clippers rivals. After all, one team has 17 championships and the other has none. The Lakers and Clippers have never faced each other in a postseason series, and they have only reached the postseason eight times in the same year. For most of basketball history, the Lakers have struggled while the Clippers have been tanking, and the moment the Clippers were ready to join them on the mountain, the Lakers plummeted back to earth.
The summer of 2019 should finally bring us the legendary rivalry between street lamps and headlights. Kawhi Leonard and Paul George spurned the Lakers for the Clippers. Little brother was the championship favorite … and then gambled away a 3-1 lead to a Nuggets team the Lakers beat on their way to the 2020 title. Injuries exhausted the two teams from there. Despite all the opening night and Christmas showdowns, the Lakers and Clippers still never really managed to play a truly meaningful game with meaningful stakes for either side.
Well, that will change. On Wednesday, the Clippers will “host” the Lakers for arguably the most important game the two have ever played against each other. For the first time in the history of this non-rivalry, both the Lakers and Clippers are going all out to win the championship, and both the Lakers and Clippers need to win this game to prepare for it.
The Lakers have never led the Clippers overall this season. In fact, the Clippers have led the Lakers by as much as 6.5 games this season, but since then the fortunes have slowly shifted in favor of the purple and gold. The Lakers got well. The Clippers have caught the injury bug. The Lakers dropped Russell Westbrook and rose. The Clippers signed Russell Westbrook and saw firsthand why the Lakers were so eager to move him in the first place.
They go into Wednesday night tied 41-38 in the standings. There’s a very real chance that the team that loses on Wednesday will be battling for a postseason spot in the play-in round. The winner will sit in the top 6.
Of course there are no guarantees here. The conference is so condensed that other teams could push down the winner or prop up the loser. But the Clippers know full well how scary the play-in round can be. They were eliminated last season when they lost twice there. Anything can happen in a single game, especially for teams as injury-prone as these two.
And if anything, the narrative stakes outweigh the practical ones. The Westbrook trade saved the Lakers’ season. A long post-season run without him would only further reinforce the idea that he is no longer capable of playing a meaningful role in a team with championship ambitions. An early exit from Clippers could be the final nail in this coffin. It’s no secret that Lakers fans were quick to get angry with Westbrook, and he publicly expressed his frustration with them on a number of occasions. There could be no greater revenge for him than to push the Lakers back into the play-in morass they were trying to escape from without him.
It’s not quite the Western Conference Finals showdown we were promised in 2019, but it’s almost more appropriate. The NBA’s fiercest nonrivalry doesn’t quite deserve the postseason, but that doesn’t mean their biggest game doesn’t warrant the limelight the Clippers so notoriously shun. The Lakers and Clippers gave us four decades of meaningless basketball, but if they ever want to form a true, high-stakes rivalry, Wednesday seems like as good a place to start as any.