Report: ‘Totally true’ that Clippers tanked end of regular season to avoid Lakers early in playoffs

It appears that the Los Angeles Clippers tanked at the end of the regular season in order to avoid playing the Los Angeles Lakers early on in the 2021 postseason.

“The notion about Shannon [Sharpe] and I making this up about the Clippers tanking to avoid the Lakers,” reported Fox Sports’ Chris Broussard on Wednesday. “I texted somebody who would know, Skip, last week and I was like, ‘Man, I keep hearing that the Clippers tanked to avoid the Lakers. There’s no way I believe that. That can’t be true.’ I got the text back from a person that would know that, totally true, and he didn’t like it. He was ‘bad karma,’ all that. I believe it. They didn’t want the Lakers. I’m not saying they wouldn’t have been scared of them in the conference finals, but for whatever reason, they didn’t want them early. That’s what I’m told.”

There has been much talk about the Clippers losing the last two games of the regular season, which came against the subpar Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder, to shy away from the Lakers at the beginning of the playoffs.

As a matter of fact, Lakers veteran Jared Dudley subtly called out some teams for conducting tanking to avoid the defending champs.

Of course, the Lakers are the reigning heavyweights and still have four-time MVP LeBron James at the helm of operations so it makes sense why the Clippers would want to be prudent.

However, the apparent plan hasn’t worked too well as the Clippers are currently down 0-2 to the Dallas Mavericks in the first round of the 2021 playoffs. The Clippers dropped both losses at home.

Meanwhile, the Lakers have split the first two games of their first-round series versus the Phoenix Suns. The Lakers stole Game 2 on the road with a 109-102 victory on Tuesday.