Clippers to Play Golden State Warriors in First Round of NBA Playoffs

The Oklahoma City Thunder handled the Milwaukee Bucks tonight 127-116, as a Thunder team without Paul George triumphed over a Bucks team that rested all of it’s key players. Meanwhile, the San Antonio Spurs took out the Dallas Mavericks in Dirk Nowitzki’s final NBA game, 105-94, as the tanking Mavs sat Luka Doncic and didn’t really try to do much but get Dirk shots.

With those two wins, the Los Angeles Clippers have been locked into the 8 seed of the Western Conference Playoff bracket, and will face the Golden State Warriors in the first round. As I wrote yesterday, this result has been expected since the Clippers’ disastrous loss to the Lakers last Friday, but feels no better now that it’s finally here.

The Warriors are healthy and rested into the postseason, the finest basketball machine of the modern era, and perhaps of all time. The scrappy Clippers have lost three games in a row going into tonight’s contest against the Jazz, and are at least somewhat banged up to boot. Hopefully the Clippers’ rest up over the next two days and are fully healthy going into the series: they’ll need every hand on deck.

We will have more to come on the series in the coming days, but the Clippers will enter it as huge underdogs. They will, as always, have a chip on their shoulders: hopefully they can use that to their advantage to, at the very least, make the series a more competitive one than people expect.

Now, all eyes go to the Clippers’ game against the Jazz, and the last regular season game call of Ralph Lawler’s career.