Jerry West was looking forward to a postseason battle for Los Angeles.
West, who currently works as a consultant for the Los Angeles Clippers, expressed his disappointment with the season's suspension potentially uprooting a historic playoff matchup between his team and its fellow Staples Center tenants, the Lakers.
"We were ascending OK, and now when are we going to get back? When are we going to get back? No one knows," West recently told Ernie Johnson on NBA TV. "And the Lakers across town - this would have been an incredible thing for basketball if someway, somehow, these two teams could have played in a Western Conference final."
The two L.A. clubs have never met in the postseason due in large part to the Clippers' lack of playoff success; they've made the postseason just 14 times since being founded as the Buffalo Braves in 1970 and have never progressed past the second round.
However, the Lakers and Clippers were the first and second seeds in the West, respectively, and were lined up to potentially meet with a Finals berth on the line until the coronavirus pandemic brought the 2019-20 season to an indefinite halt March 11.
"I think you would have seen record numbers on TNT," the Lakers legend continued. "I think the viewership would have been obviously biased toward the Lakers, which is great, OK. It's just horrible to sit here and not have something to root for, or me anticipating to see (the) Milwaukee (Bucks) in the East or the other good teams over there."
