Clippers' future looks foggy after epic playoff collapse

Sam Amick | USA TODAY Sports

Show Caption Hide Caption Clippers collapse as Rockets surge USA Today Sports' Sam Amick breaks down Clippers lost and what it means going forward.

HOUSTON – There were eight men in the huddle outside the Los Angeles Clippers' locker room, all of them wearing suits or street clothes and none of them looking pleased.

But only one was doing all the talking.

Doc Rivers, the Clippers coach and top front-office executive whose team had just suffered a case of asphyxia in the Western Conference Semifinals that won't be soon forgotten, was speaking with endless exasperation and surely trying to explain how this could all come to pass.

Steve Ballmer, the former Microsoft CEO who paid a record $2 billion to buy this team last August and was so hell-bent on bringing them all better days, listened intently inside their huddle with a blank look upon his face. The others, assistant coaches who surely thought like so many others that this team was finally turning the corner after its gritty first-round series win over the defending champion San Antonio Spurs, had open eyes and ears as well.

There is no explanation for any of this, though, and there's certainly no excuse. The Clippers, who became just the ninth team in the history of the NBA to blow a 3-1 series lead in a seven-game playoff series, followed Friday's Game 6 collapse with one of the least-spirited efforts you'll ever see on this sort of stage. It was 113-100 Rockets in Game 7 at the Toyota Center, an end-to-end effort by the resilient Rockets against a Clippers team that put up about as much fight as the actors at Rockets home games who let the mascot pummel them with pie.

In the place that was once deemed Choke City, no less.

Yet again, this Clippers core of Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, and DeAndre Jordan that hasn't reached the Conference Finals in their four seasons together couldn't get it done. Yet again, Rivers – who came to town two summers ago from Boston for the sole purpose of leading this sad-sack franchise to the NBA mountaintop – was left to wonder how he'll improve a roster that is so restricted. And yet again, a Clippers franchise that had been to the playoffs just four times before the Paul trade with New Orleans in Dec. 2012 appears destined for basketball doom.

Unless Rivers, of course, can find a way to work the kind of roster magic that certainly didn't happen this season. For all the fault that should be shared between the Clippers' Big Three with how they wilted at the end here, roster depth was a major problem for these Clippers. As Rivers knows, that falls on him.

"I want to fix it," Rivers told USA TODAY Sports. "I want to win. That's why I came here. I knew when I came here that roster-wise it was going to be very difficult. The first thing I did before I took this job, I looked at the roster and we laughed. I was like, 'What the (expletive) can we do with this?' It was more the contracts. But we have to try to do it somehow. I don't know how yet, but something will work out."

The difference this time is that the Clippers could wind up losing one of their key cogs – Jordan will be an unrestricted free agent in July, and the Houston-born-and-bred big man has made it clear that he will consider other options. Rivers made it clear that the Clippers will do all they can to keep him, and the fact that they can offer a five-year maximum-salary deal while other teams can only offer four could surely play a part in his decision.

But there have long been rumblings that Jordan is eager to step into a new situation, one where he's not always perceived as the third fiddle. He swears by Rivers, which certainly helps, but even his coach admitted there was some concern.

"We don't talk about (free agency)," Rivers told USA TODAY Sports. "DJ loves us, but you've always got to be concerned. DJ would be great. We've got to try to do whatever we can. He's obviously a free agent, and he has earned that right to be free. I don't want to say much on it, but we love him."

The torturous part for Rivers is that the Clippers are so darned tantalizing. They have spent much of the past four seasons looking, at times, like championship contenders. As such, the notion of making a major move appears to be far-fetched for the time being.

The 30-year-old Paul is coming off one of the best seasons of his career and is signed for at least two more seasons (he has an option for the 2017-18 campaign). Yet because the Clippers are so limited in what they can do – they owe a combined $40 million to Griffin and Paul next season and hope to add Jordan's max deal – might Rivers look to take the extreme approach and considering trading someone like Paul before Father Time catches up with him? Rivers, from the sound of it, isn't entertaining the idea in the slightest.

"You've got to give (Paul) just some more support, you know?" Rivers told USA TODAY Sports. "I think bringing (his son) Austin (Rivers) here (in mid-January) helped us. We've got a 22-year-old (in Austin), and now to me we've got to get another guard who's in the middle age group. So now you're growing with Austin and CJ (Wilcox), and we need another defensive guy too."

What they needed, of course, was to take this next step that continues to evade them.

"We didn't put them away," Griffin said. "We didn't take advantage of being up 3-1. We didn't do the things we needed to do. We can't look at anybody but ourselves. It's disappointing.

"The Clipper Curse when I first got here was No. 1 picks getting hurt and not working out…Them not making the playoffs. Them not having winning seasons. No one talked about getting past the second round. Not a single soul talked about that. But now, that's what everyone talks about. Just like the last one, we're going to bust through this one."