Do the Clippers still believe in things they shouldn’t?

Self-deception is the governing principle of mediocre decision-making. Inscription after inscription of overblown confidence line the epitaphs of lost NBA front office jobs: the disappointing young prospect inked to a multi-year deal, the star player walking away in free agency, the botched star-chase, the go-for-broke trade deals that leave the team, well, broke. It is why, for a front office, few things are more important than knowing your station. Proactive decision-making is the lifeblood of middling NBA franchises.

On the other hand, self-deception and self-belief are merely two sides of the same coin; success is rarely achieved without a measure of both. At the root all greatness, one can find delusion.

Perhaps that’s why, despite longstanding structural failings, misfortunes, embarrassing playoff losses — and the mounting paralysis that accompanies them — the Lob City Clippers chose to run it back time and time again; why, after DeAndre Jordan set his sail toward the Dallas Mavericks, the Clippers’ core, Doc Rivers in tow, pulled out all the stops in hopes for a last-second hairpin turn; why, despite the public ridicule he know he’d endure, Jordan did in fact change his mind. But the timing was never right, and the talent, considerable as it was, would never be enough to match the mighty Warriors.

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When Chris Paul requested a sign-and-trade to the Houston Rockets, thereby putting an end to the experiment he started six years ago, the Clippers were presented with yet another question of self-belief: Were the past few years of regular season success enough to buy the Clippers’ the cultural cachet required to detonate the roster, and rebuild by playing the free agency game? Their success was accompanied by structural changes, like Steve Ballmer replacing Donald Sterling as the owner, but would it be enough? Could the enduring legacy of Lob City be that, despite the fact that it didn’t deliver a championship, it vaulted the Clippers into normalcy? Could the curse be lifted?

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The answer, to the tune of $173 million over five years to retain Blake Griffin, was a resounding no. That, despite 28 years on Earth and a toe injury that projects to keep him sidelined until December. They also gave up a 2018 first-round pick, last year’s 40th pick, Diamond Stone, and any inkling of cap flexibility, for the right to pay Danilo Gallinari over $20 million per year.

One-step-back, two-steps-forward is an exceedingly rare proposition, of course. The long gamers are few and far-between, for many reasons, two big ones being their own history and self-conception. In that light, one can see why the Clippers — those of the curse, the old edict ‘Clippers gonna clip’, the NBA’s longest-tenured laughing stock, constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop — would veer in the direction of safety and convention.

Forget the sticky web of identity for a brief moment, however, and strip the thing down to its core: the Clippers have at their disposal a forward-thinking owner with an bottomless wallet, the allure of Los Angeles, plans for a new arena, and if they would have let Griffin walk, a roadmap to enough cap space to sign two players to maximum contracts. They’d be vying against the Lakers, sure, but so is every other free agent destination. To an extent, you are who you allow yourself to be.

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Clipperland is heavy with an air of unfinished business. It applied generally to their championship hopes, as injuries, suspensions, horror-show meltdowns, racist tapes — you name it — derailed them in the postseason, but peel a layer beyond Chris Paul’s arrival and recall Blake Griffin, the rookie phenomenon.

The athletic marvel. The 6-foot-10 brute conducting a crosscourt ballet recital with the ball in his hands, topping off the performance with a dunk, inciting visions of LeBron. The ferocity. The disrespect. He was undeniably modern, like Amare Stoudemire before the surgeries, with brief contours of the playmaking ability he is now lauded for, and he was only a rookie.

He was a tantalizing force, something new unto himself, but self-discovery took a backseat to cold-hard results when Paul signed with the Clippers, vaulting them from a happy-go-lucky outfit to a Serious Squad with Something To Prove.

Griffin worked incredibly hard to fit into the traditional vacuum between Paul and Jordan, improving his jumper ever year, refining an awkward, power-based post game, and taking great pains to think the game on defense, helping the helper, ratcheting up his toughness in one-on-one matchups and closing the gap on heretofore easy pocket passes to rolling big men. But it was never the right fit. Modernity gave way to shooting, when it should have given way to positional flexibility.

It’s become easy, too easy, to view Griffin as a defensively inept strongman with a clunky jumper — a relic from another era, defined by the mystifying lulls, the second half disappearing acts, every clanked jumper he settled into, main players in the Clippers’ playoff demise. The paralysis-by-analysis that inevitably followed his stronger performances reeked of shaky confidence, like he was reading off a script that he knew wasn’t meant for him.

There’s always been a gap between who Griffin is and who fans think he should have become, be it the old school bruiser or the futuristic cyborg. It’s not necessarily insurmountable. Maybe he was just busy being other people. The other Griffin could exist out there somewhere — a point-forward while Gallinari and DeAndre Jordan man the frontcourt and Patrick Beverley spots up for 3s — waiting to be unlocked and smoothed over. Griffin is, if nothing else, complicated.

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There is, in the end, an enduring, if depressing, mystique to the relationship between the Clippers and Blake Griffin. Because nothing, absolutely nothing, defines this franchise more than unrealized potential. If the Lakers are Hollywood’s silver screen, after all, what’s more Clipper-esque than an aspiring comedy writer, or a misunderstood star?

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It may not be as plucky, as salt-of-the-earth, as the bond shared by, say, Tony Allen, Zach Randolph and the late Grit-N’-Grind Grizzlies, but it is real, the story of the saviour and the saved. The moment Blake Griffin stepped onto the court, the plight of the Clippers was irrevocably altered. Neither party, it seems, is willing forget that.

The glass slipper might be cracked in half, held together by dusted scotch tape, the princess is really a jester, a 6-foot-10 ginger with gangly, size-17 feet and a busted toe but maybe, just maybe, these crazy kids are destined — or doomed — to be together.

What are the Clippers for, anyway, if not believing in things you shouldn’t?