This is embarrassing, another year, another disappointment. Some teams just aren’t meant to be good, I was always told. The problem with that was my favorite team, the Los Angeles Clippers, had been the biggest laughing-stock in sports for about 30 years before I was even born and they weren’t getting any better. The “Clipper Curse” they called it. Being a Clipper fan, not that there were many since we shared an arena with the 16-time champion Lakers, has always been a very difficult undertaking.

This “Clipper Curse” always started the same way. We draft a star player out of college who for one reason or another just never pans out. Here we sit again the 2009 NBA Draft and we have the first overall pick. “With the first pick of the 2009 NBA Draft, the Los Angeles Clippers select Blake Griffin out of the University of Oklahoma.” Year after year I had heard the NBA commissioner announce the name of our next failed draft pick so at the time, my thoughts were going wild as to how this guy would ruin his career before it even got started.

Blake Griffin, the consensus best college basketball player from the year before was a lock to be an all-star, but we’d all heard that before. Just weeks into his NBA career and this high-flying dunk machine breaks his knee-cap and is declared out for his entire rookie season. Here we go again is all I can think as I gear up to go to school and hear the never-ending line of bullshit I’m guaranteed to hear from all of my southern California friends who were raised Laker fans. For the entire NBA season I walked around hearing Laker fans talk championships while I’m destined to watch my favorite team in sports wallow and fade away into the abyss of missing the playoffs. The only thing I can think is, how good is Blake going to be when he gets back because this is getting real old.

Another NBA season down and what a shock, the Lakers won their second straight title. With the start of a new season Clippers fans now have something they haven’t had before, optimism. As we watch the highlights and games broadcast we see this high-flying unbelievable talent crushing opponents. Number 32, Blake Griffin is the real deal. All of the sudden, the little known Clipper faithful have something to be proud of. We finally have a player we can rally around.

After one season in the books a miracle comes in the form of two words, “trade vetoed.” The Lakers had attempted to trade for the best point guard in the league Chris Paul. However, the NBA was tired of the rich getting richer so the trade was vetoed and instead this immensely talented player came to the long comedic Clippers because he wanted to play with number 32. Now the Clippers had what they had always needed, some stars and enough talent to upend the Lakers atop their pedestal in LA and hopefully enough to make a long playoff run.

Now several years removed from all of this, Blake Griffin and Chris Paul have led the Clippers to 4 straight playoff appearances and 2 division championships over the in arena rival Lakers. Clippers mega-fans like myself have heard it all over the years and the fact of the matter is this, without getting a guy like Blake Griffin, we’d still be catching shit from Laker fans everyday in one way or another instead of not caring how they’re doing because we know we’re better for once.

If there is one thing I can say about number 32 it’s he allowed Clipper fans to have hope. Now for the first time in the teams’ 45-year history, people are mentioning our name in the championship conversation and not the Lakers. Ask any real Clipper fan the reason why and we’ll all tell you the same thing. Blake Griffin, Number 32.

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