Last year, every single matchup between the Lakers and Clippers was not only appointment television and a potential Western Conference Finals preview, but seemingly also a referendum on both teams’ collective souls.
This season, the matchup hasn’t quite had the same luster. For one thing, it’s no longer the most relevant barometer for the championship hopes of two teams that had never won with their current cores. The Lakers winning the title last year while the Clippers blew a 3-1 lead in the second round gave the defending champs a level of benefit of the doubt over their cross-hall rivals that no regular season result can quite cancel out.