LA Clippers fans are still trying to forget how the end of last season went. The opening of the Intuit Dome and the beginning of a new era of Clippers basketball has created a lot of excitement that has largely helped numb that pain.

But looking back, it wasn’t pretty. After the Clippers became one of the NBA’s best teams by record during the winter, their success slowly began to melt away as spring began. Kawhi Leonard’s final game of the regular season in Charlotte in late March led to LA losing four of its final eight games before the playoffs.

At that point, they looked like a shadow of the team that dominated the competition in December and January. So what exactly happened to cause this sudden drop in performance? Paul George recently gave his explanation on his podcast as to why things went downhill so quickly for the Clippers.

George started his story by answering a question asking him what he liked most about the last NBA season. He talked about the James Harden trade and how the team struggled a lot when the former MVP first arrived, but then things turned around and a winning streak followed.

“We started to figure it out,” George said. “Then we had a period of about a month, month and a half where we were just playing basketball at an extremely high level. And I think now it was the point where people were jumping on the bandwagon. Like this team is serious now. They’re serious, they’ve found their rhythm.”

“And just that phase of stepping out on the floor with your brothers. Being out there with Russ, (Kawhi), James, Big Zu and the whole team. Being out there with them was a presence and every time we stepped out on the floor it felt like we were going to win. I think that was the highlight because you can’t suppress that.

“I wish you could bottle that up and say, ‘You know what, we figured it out, let’s wait and do this until the end of April, the beginning of May.’ I feel like we peaked, teams saw through us and it was all downhill from there.” That report certainly seems to line up with what fans saw from afar.

The Clippers seemed like an unstoppable machine for most of last winter. At their best, they completely dismantled teams and even won by 19 points against the eventual NBA champions on January 27th.

But unfortunately, there are still ups and downs within a season, and it’s extremely difficult to maintain the exact same level of play for a long time. Peaking too early is absolutely possible in the NBA, and it’s entirely possible that the Clippers team we saw in January could make it past the first round in the playoffs.