It is one thing to love a sport that doesn’t love you back. It is another thing to love a sport that hates you.
For Clippers fans, Tuesday night’s epic Game 7 collapse against the Nuggets was the exclamation point on their team’s 50 years of failure. But you didn’t have to be a Clippers fan to feel the pain. It also was a gut punch to anyone who has ever been so afraid of losing something that the fear itself made holding on to it impossible.
Watching the Clippers heave futile shot after futile shot toward the basket in the fourth quarter was like watching an All-Star shortstop catch the yips and derail his career by sailing throw after throw into the stands behind first base for reasons that can’t ever be explained.
Sure, the Clippers blew big leads in Game 5 and Game 6 when they had the chance to close out the series and advance to their first-ever conference finals. But they couldn’t possibly blow three games in a row,…
