INGLEWOOD, Calif. — The place was lovely. 

On Wednesday night time, within the season opener, the Los Angeles Clippers debuted their new, gleaming, futuristic area. No extra sharing with the Los Angeles Lakers. No extra banners above, lined or in any other case, celebrating another person’s accomplishments. No extra feeling like a second-class staff whittling the time away in another person’s constructing.

The opposite L.A. staff had its own residence now, and it was a sight to see.

All they had been lacking was a staff worthy of it.

Take the way in which they misplaced, in additional time, to the Phoenix Suns, 116-113. The deciding play was a turnover whereas making an attempt to inbound the ball with three seconds left, and the metaphor was spot on: An opportunity squandered, hope extinguished as shortly because it had emerged. It was the ugly exclamation level after coughing up a 10-point lead deep into the fourth quarter.

However even a single win would no extra have camouflaged how this Clippers undertaking has withered on the vine the previous 12 months, any greater than a elaborate new area can be in a position to take action. 

This staff has no plan to get to the place it was already imagined to be, nor any hope that the Intuit Dome will for the following few years be something greater than a shiny reminder of what is not inside.

It wasn’t imagined to be this fashion. For a number of years, as this staff’s construction rose from the bottom only a mile from the outdated Los Angeles Discussion board, a spot that helped outline and revolutionize the NBA through the Showtime Lakers period, the Clippers entrance workplace hatched a plan to fill it with a contender.

They’d line up the celebrities, rent the coach, and provides proprietor Steve Ballmer the type of squad he craved to kick off this new period, their period, inside Ballmer’s $2 billion area, his personal private ode to what a basketball expertise ought to really feel like.

Profitable — actual, sustained, they’re-a-contender successful — was at all times imagined to be a part of that plan.

They’d satisfied Kawhi Leonard, contemporary off his championship one-and-done mercenary season in Toronto, to come back residence to L.A. Then they’d traded all these draft picks for Paul George, together with, in that deal, sending a sure Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to the Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder.

When, a number of years later, that hadn’t labored, they went all-in on James Harden, too, bringing him from Philadelphia. Extra picks and decide swaps went into the ether, the worth to pay for a winner, now. Sure, the long run might need been going out the door, however the near-present would come with a well-timed competitor to mark the second, yesterday’s second, when this place would open and a Western Convention drive would take up residence.

You understand how this story ends: George is a Sixer. Leonard is once more on his will-he-or-won’t-he-ever-play merry-go-round. SGA is a favourite to be this 12 months’s Most Helpful Participant, the focus of a Thunder staff that’s doubtless the precise greatest within the Western Convention.

Oh, and OKC is loaded with lots of the Clippers’ future picks, together with subsequent summer season’s first-rounder, a abruptly alluring asset within the Cooper Flagg sweepstakes. Extra insult added to the damage of how that commerce turned out.

There isn’t a straightforward, sudden or positive repair, as our Sam Quinn excellently laid out final week.

In some ways, the Suns staff that beat the Clippers Wednesday night time is a better-looking reflection of L.A.’s personal state of affairs: Boasting a wonderful coach, quick on depth, quick on future picks, with no straightforward fixes, all whereas being caught between the championship expectations that blossomed to start with and the boring sense that the large and daring plans went awry.

However Phoenix’s ceiling is larger, sitting within the realm of being a top-six staff this 12 months after which — nicely, who is aware of? Perhaps you get sizzling, expertise wins out, good issues occur. Even the Play-In for Phoenix appears like an absolute worst-case situation. And that’s, if nothing else, a shot, some pores and skin within the recreation.

Their famous person and former Finals MVP, Kevin Durant, is definitely wholesome and enjoying. They’ve Devin Booker. Each are higher than a banged-up Kawhi or an accessible James Harden, who wanted 28 photographs to attain 29 factors on Wednesday night time and threw in eight turnovers for good measure. Perhaps Bradley Beal is healthier. Perhaps these three getting an actual run collectively this 12 months — plus the addition of Tyus Jones, a much-needed level guard, and new head coach Mike Budenholzer — works.

Phoenix has some items, some ceiling, some hope.

And what do the Clippers have? They’ve a brand new area.

They actually ushered the place in with some fashion. They launched “The Wall” earlier than the sport, Ballmer’s rising row of seats behind one of many baskets meant to carry collectively and bond the manic Clippers followers he desires to see in his personal picture. 

In actual fact, Ballmer did a manic dance and screamed “WELCOME HOME CLIPPER NATION!” right into a microphone to kick issues off. There have been fireworks — inside the world — through the nationwide anthem. The place is slick and fascinating, filled with cool tech and a surprising huge display, with an out of doors space that feels half carnival, half tailgate, half celebration of the sport.

The place is a marvel. An ideal place to catch a recreation for an evening, Clippers fan or not.

It is the staff inside it that feels so incongruous right here: A botched ambition, a failed plan, a mistake filling up an area designed to showcase one thing sensational. 

By the tip of the primary quarter — when the Suns had been nonetheless up 22-21 — the power within the constructing had already vanished, faster than the thought of Kawhi enjoying a 68-game season once more, faster than the Clippers’ hopes turned to mud when PG headed East. 

It got here again as they made their fourth-quarter cost, continued into additional time, after which sputtered and died to utter silence when Phoenix received after an unsightly OT. Leaving Intuit, individuals appeared to know: The hope earlier had felt hole. Not even their new, lovely residence will change that if this staff is what we noticed Wednesday night time — and what most of us count on going ahead.

Earlier than the sport, requested about this model new area, the Suns’ new coach waxed poetic for some time regardless of, he mentioned, not having seen all of it but. The place is spectacular, and, on prime of that, Coach Bud is a pleasant man. He was completely happy to say good issues.

“All the pieces’s thrilling,” Budenholzer completed. “All the pieces’s new.” 

Properly, not the whole lot.

As a result of Clippers basketball stays caught within the mire of mediocrity, irrelevance and a murky path ahead.

That is a tricky basketball actuality that even a gleaming new area cannot obscure.