A funny thing happened on the Clippers’ way to continued ignominy.
Imagine finishing the season on a 14-1 surge that takes you to the third seed in the brutal Western Conference and finding yourself facing the sixth-seeded booby prize, the defending NBA champion San Antonio Spurs, who are favored in the series opener on your floor.
What else is new? As one buzzard said to another, “I’ve been having Clipper luck.”
Oh, you say the Clippers won?
Fairy tales can come true; they just never have for the Clippers. Three more wins would be the closest they have ever come, even if the games don’t turn out as one-sided as Sunday night’s 107-92 rout.
This wasn’t a mix tape on YouTube. This was reality.
Blake Griffin went for 26 points, 12 rebounds, six assists, three blocks and three steals, posterizing Aron Baynes so often, there may not be enough bandwidth on YouTube for all the clips.
Remember when Griffin dunked on a young Knicks center and coined a new word: Mozgoved? On Sunday night, the Spurs got Bayned.
At point guard, Chris Paul outscored Tony Parker, 32-10.
Even if it was only for a night, the Spurs looked old. Tim Duncan got his customary double-double (11 points, 11 boards), but with the Spurs trying to mount a rally in the fourth quarter, he barely jumped on an offensive rebound, allowing DeAndre Jordan to go right through him to get the ball and put it back in.
Spurs coach Gregg Popovich wasted no time reaching into the strategy well. He had his players play Hack-a-Jordan four times in the first half but none in the second. The way his guys were going, they might have had to put Jordan on the line a hundred times or so, and Popovich may not have wanted to keep them up that late.
Afterward, Popovich gave a few short answers of the kind he usually saves for in-game interviews. Then he made an announcement.
“Maybe I can help everybody by just making a statement.,” he said, “because these questions are unbelievable. Their defense was better than our offense, that’s the bottom line. Their aggressiveness, their physicality, their athleticism really hurt us offensively.”
Yes, the Clippers have advanced to the conference semifinals twice in the last three seasons, but their first-round victories were over Memphis and the previous incarnation of Golden State, both in seven games.
If this was just one game, it was against the defending champions.
Donald Sterling may be gone, but the Clippers’ karma isn’t. If the team is now respectable, it goes all but unnoticed in its home town.
The Lakers, en route to their 21-61 finish, saw their TV ratings crater, which wasn’t a surprise. The surprise was that, despite a the clearly superior and far more entertaining level of play and the vibrant ownership of exuberant Steve Ballmer – who paid $2 billion for the franchise – the Clippers saw their ratings decline, too.
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Drawing the Spurs as a first-round opponent seemed like a replay of Clippers tradition. The company line was that it was fine with them, they had to go though the Spurs anyway, yada yada yada.
Of course, before trotting that out, coach Doc Rivers said he thought, “Wow, this is what you get for going 14-1.”
Rivers ended his playing career in 1996 with the Spurs, just months before Popovich, then the GM, added coach to his duties. He 
also served as color commentator on their broadcast package.
That being the case, he was asked before Sunday’s game what he thought of having to play the last game of the weekend at 10:30 p.,m. ET on TNT, rather than in one of the prime afternoon slots.
“Well, to me, it just speaks to the disrepect the Spurs have gotten [after] five titles,” Rivers said. “We’ve done nothing, so we deserve to be at 7:30 (local time). When we got them, I thought, ‘Well, we’ll play an afternoon game.’ I was wrong.”
Maybe the tip was too late for the Spurs. After all, the starting time was 9:30 p.m. San Antonio time.
Of course, it was just one game, even if it couldn’t have been much better for the Clippers or worse for the Spurs.
Someone asked Popovich what the Spurs have to do better.
“You’re serious?” he asked incredulously. “We have to do lots of things better. It’s basketball. We have to shot free throws better. We have to shoot from three better. We can’t turn it over as much. We have to get back in transition better.
“Does that help?”
We’ll find out in Game 2. The Clippers have until Wednesday to enjoy this one before the big reality check.
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Hall of Fame writer Mark Heisler is a founding member and regular contributor to SheridanHoops, as well as the Los Angeles Daily News and Forbes.com. Follow him on Twitter.