What Were the Los Angeles Clippers?

Every basketball team worth its salt has an identity. They know exactly what they are and how they want to play every time they step on the court. You can name their style whenever they come up in conversation.

The Rockets switch everything, launch three-pointers,and isolate with James Harden; the Los Angeles Lakers are LeBron James doing LeBron James things; the Toronto Raptors are a bottomless defensive pit of arms, intelligence, and adaptability to the schemes of Professor Nick Nurse.

But it has been impossible to summarize the Los Angeles Clippers all season long, other than maybe “we have Kawhi Leonard.” The reigning Finals MVP and arguable best player alive hand-picked Paul George, who had just received more MVP votes than every player except Harden and Giannis Antetokounmpo, to join an endearingly scrappy supporting cast that succeeded without star power in 2018-19. That team’s identity was Lou Williams-Montrezl Harrell crunch-time pick-and-rolls and underdog attitude, but all that had to go out the window when Leonard and George arrived.

And so, despite their supreme talent on and off the bench, it was fair to wonder at the beginning of the season what this team would be. With endless possibilities on offense and defense at their disposal, how would they play? Fast? Slow? Big? Versatile? Would they launch a ton of threes, develop a lethal two-man game with Leonard and George, blitz ball-handlers, switch everything?

All season long, I assumed the answer was “all of the above.” Leonard and George kept missing time due to load management and shoulder surgery, but the Clippers finished with the NBA’s second-best offense and fifth-best defense, healthy marks of a championship favorite. George, Leonard, and Williams ran an effective screen-and-roll game with Ivica Zubac and Harrell. Beverley harassed the opponent’s point guard without having to assume those responsibilities on the offensive end. All the pieces fit. Nothing looked “wrong,” per se. If times got tough in the playoffs, one assumed they’d just put the ball in Leonard’s exceptional hands and watch him take the game over—a reasonable conclusion, given how incredible L.A.’s crunchtime offense was all year long.

Now that the Denver Nuggets have not only come back from a 3-1 deficit to beat the Clippers, but done so in humiliating fashion—the Clippers gave up 15-plus point third quarter leads in two games, and lost the decider by 20 points—that has obviously turned out to be wrong. As it turns out, Leonard can’t do everything by himself, and when he went historically cold in the second half of Game 7, the entire team self-combusted.

And now that the Clippers’ season is officially over, I struggle to think of any identifiable qualities that stretch beyond the enormous talent they assembled. Why is it so hard to come up with a two-sentence elevator pitch for a team that was supposed to be the best in the league?

When you look at how and from where they scored this season, the Clippers took very little to the extreme. They were 12th in fastbreak points, 13th in points off turnovers, 24th in points in the paint, and 16th in three-point rate. They didn’t assist each other’s baskets at a high frequency, and their volume of pick-and-rolls and isolation plays were about in line with any other quality offense. They limited opposing opportunities around the basket very well, but forfeited a bunch of threes. They played pretty fast but didn’t attack all that often in transition.

Taken together, it’s the profile of a team that might not have ever really been a team. The Clippers had four five-man units that logged at least 75 minutes during the regular season. That number is normal, but then you look at the players involved and it’s almost like four different rosters are mashed together.

Leonard appears in three of those lineups and George is in two. L.A.’s most common group had Moe Harkless—who was traded to the Knicks in February for Marcus Morris—at power forward. It’s third-most played lineup featured Patrick Patterson, who played zero relevant minutes inside the bubble and was listed as inactive for Game 7. The next group down had Rodney McGruder (out of the rotation) and Jerome Robinson (currently a member of the Washington Wizards) in it.

Coming into the season, their five best players were Leonard, George, Harrell, Williams, and Beverley. That’s a championship, closeout five that creates matchup problems all across the floor. It’s small, sure, but also nimble and feisty. During the regular season, that group logged a grand total of 56 minutes in 17 games. In Game 7, with their season on the line, it played...3 minutes.

Twitter—and other NBA players—roasted the Clippers last night, perhaps too harshly. Yes, the Clippers did carry themselves like multi-time champions before they’d earned that right, but immediate success for two superstars joining a new organization is harder than it looks. Teams that have to balance egos, shots, and touches while also trying to discover how they can best operate as a group don’t necessarily find the answers immediately. The 2008 Celtics are the greatest success story. LeBron’s first season with the Miami Heat and second go-around in Cleveland had their fair share of hiccups. Last year’s Raptors won it all with Leonard as a mercenary leading a core that had been together for years. We have yet to see how things will go in Brooklyn with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.

Before the bubble, Leonard and George only appeared in 32 games together. That’s 760 minutes in which they outscored other teams by 189 points.

On one hand those results are impressive. On the other, chemistry does matter. (The Clippers players themselves, in unusually candid post-game comments, have pointed to chemistry as the issue.) Even with all their advanced numbers reflecting pure dominance–especially when Leonard was on the court, be it with George or without—the team apparently needed more time for something dependable or substantive to be built.

Throughout NBA history, top-tier talent almost always wins the day. But in a post-Warriors dynasty world, where the league’s talent is more widespread and players move more frequently, every team interested in winning it all also needs to pin down what makes its own roster so special. The Denver Nuggets had several years to figure that out. The Clippers haven’t yet.

Originally Appeared on GQ