Personally I put this one more on Kerr’s asinine playcall coming out of the timeout. Any play that centers around having Draymond Green camping out in the corner to provide “spacing” is a shit play. Westbrook totally ignored him and just sagged into the lane to help with the drive by Steph. This really looks like down one and in the bonus Kerr thought “what we need here is for Dray to take a 3 at the buzzer” which I’m sorry, is just stupid.

Does this mean the Clippers have him playing off ball more than he has in 8 years? I thought they brought him in to run the offense?

Kings 2002 G7. They’ve never had a true championship contender since.

That didn’t cause the Kings to change anything though. They still had the same team together two years later when they lost to the Wolves in the 2nd round of the 2004 playoffs. 2002 was as close as they ever got to the title, but that loss didn’t totally derail their quest like the OP is asking about.

Cavs 2018 Finals G1

I don’t think anyone really thinks the Cavs had a realistic shot at that championship that year, even if they’d won Game 1. It was widely speculated all season long that LeBron would leave that summer, in large part because they were not seen as true contenders anymore after Kyrie left (and especially with KD now on the Warriors). Maybe LeBron stays if they win, but I think he was pretty clearly already looking at the Lakers before that, just like he had looked at Cleveland back in 2014 before the Heat lost that year.