Well, this settles the mystery (I mean, I figured the answer was obvious anyway, but it’s nice to see it in black & white) of if the clips were aware of the score of the Warriors Blazers game during last nite’s anticlimactic death knell of a game at Staples center (from the LA times):

"Obviously, I'm disappointed that we lost the game tonight," Coach Mike Dunleavy said. "Unfortunately, by halftime, we knew Golden State was up 18 at the half. Our guys came out a little bit flat."

JA Adande (again, the Times) is (I guess) appropriately snarky about the end of the clips’ season, with the headline to his column today: “These are the Clippers we know and love.”

Look at it this way: the Clippers now have a 0.5% chance of winning the NBA draft lottery and landing Greg Oden or Kevin Durant, which is better than the 0.0% chance they had of beating the Dallas Mavericks in the first round of the playoffs.

Get on board, folks: Secaucus, N.J., is the new capital of Clipper Nation.

Sigh. Sad but true. Now comes the routine annual postseason that longtime clipper fans are used to, and were jolted out of their annual routine thereby by the playoff run last season: gearing up for the NBA draft.

Adande makes another point, in relation to something I mentioned yesterday, about the Mavericks’ tanking that game a couple days back against Golden State, and late season intentional flailing in general:

David Stern, who once fined the Lakers for leaving Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson home for a meaningless end-of-the-season game at Portland, is going to have to figure out what to do about teams that don't try to win games with playoff implications. Maybe he can even address it in the same memo that deals with teams tanking to improve their lottery odds.

I've never heard that story. Where did that old Stern disciplinarian we know and hold general apathy toward go? oh yeah, he's kicking ref's asses around the block. who knows, maybe he'll pipe up about all this intentional losing balderdash, but I highly doubt it, and I actually don't really think he should. Like Dunleavy says (see a bit below), it's a coach's prerogative what the eff he wants to do. doesn't mean it doesn't suck sometimes for other parties, but the solution: don't suck in the first place. voila.

From, again, yes,(who was the a-hole whining about a lack of mainstream media clipper coverage the other day? find him, kill him) the LA Times:

…Dirk Nowitzki, Josh Howard and Jerry Stackhouse sat out the Warriors' 111-82 victory at Oakland. In addition, Jason Terry and Devin Harris played only 18 and 16 minutes, respectively.

The Warriors then clinched the eighth spot and eliminated the Clippers from playoff contention Wednesday with a 120-98 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers.

Meanwhile, the Mavericks' stars returned in a rout of Seattle.

That's just the way it goes, Coach Mike Dunleavy said.

"All teams have the right to do what's best for them," Dunleavy said. "They clearly had a choice and they made it. They made it in a big way.

End scene. There’s rumblings that Avery handed the Dubs that silver platter dub via the rationale of actually hoping that Golden State would move UP, rather than to screw over the clippers, thinking maybe the lakers would lose at Sacramento, leaving Dallas to play that “other” LA team in the first round.

Whatever, it just doesn’t effin matter anymore. I’ve said it before, and so have a million other people, the clips shoulda taken care of business WAY earlier this season. And they didn’t. Yet here we are, at least, here I am, still yappin about it. Why, he bellowed at the tear stained pillow, mascara all asmear, why? No wire hangers, indeed.