LA Clippers

The LA Clippers have spent fifty-four years as the NBA’s most reliable punchline — zero championships, decades of incompetence under Donald Sterling, and the perpetual indignity of being Los Angeles’s second basketball team in a city that barely tolerates second place — and yet here they are, in a brand-new arena, with a competitive roster, and an owner willing to spend whatever it takes to rewrite the narrative. Founded in 1970 as the Buffalo Braves, relocated to San Diego in 1978 and then to Los Angeles in 1984, the Clippers moved into the state-of-the-art Intuit Dome in 2024, an 18,000-seat arena in Inglewood that represents the most expensive attempt at franchise rehabilitation in NBA history.

Under Tyronn Lue, the Clippers finished 50-32 in 2024-25 and earned the fifth seed in the West, building a deep, versatile roster that competes in the most brutally competitive conference in basketball. The move to Intuit Dome is symbolically enormous — the Clippers finally have their own home rather than subletting from the Lakers at Crypto.com Arena, and the psychological liberation of that shift should not be underestimated. Identity matters in professional sport, and the Clippers have been borrowing someone else’s for four decades.

Steve Ballmer’s billions have transformed the Clippers from a franchise that treated mediocrity as an aspiration into one that expects to compete for championships. The Intuit Dome features cutting-edge technology and will host the 2026 NBA All-Star Game, bringing global attention to a franchise that has historically generated attention only for the wrong reasons. The championship drought remains the elephant in every room. But for the first time in their history, the Clippers have the infrastructure, the investment, and the ambition to end it.

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The Clippers enter 2025-26 with a new arena, renewed aspirations, and the same championship drought that has haunted the franchise since its inception. The Intuit Dome hosting the 2026 NBA All-Star Weekend will put the Clippers in the global spotlight, and Lue’s championship pedigree from the coaching chair gives them tactical credibility that the franchise has historically lacked. Australian fans watching ESPN will see the Clippers regularly featured in primetime broadcasts from their spectacular new venue. Whether the basketball matches the setting remains the franchise’s eternal question. For the first time, the Clippers have every resource needed to answer it.

VS — Chief sports columnist, australiafootball.com