* Tonight on NBA League Pass: Clippers vs. Timberwolves (7 ET)

Jamal Crawford spent five seasons experiencing all things Los Angeles Clippers, both the good and the bad, before moving on to his reserve role with the Minnesota Timberwolves this season. So when he hears the phrase “Clippers Curse” he knows it’s just talk, urban legend even, and an easy way to explain away some horrible twists of fate for a franchise the has endured more than its fair share of such things.

Now that he’s on a team that has to go through the Clippers to reach their own postseason goals, Crawford can acknowledge the strange things that always seem to afflict the Clippers, who are in Minneapolis for a game against the Timberwolves tonight (7 ET, NBA League Pass). As Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune highlights, its not as easy to explain away the Clippers’ tough luck as you might think:

Now 18 seasons in the league, Crawford doesn’t believe in hocus-pocus. But he played five seasons there for a franchise he called “family,” long enough to see enough strange things.

“It was just sometimes bad timing,” he said. “I remember, just bad timing.”

He remembers an April 2016 playoff series against Portland that the Clippers led 2-0. In Game 4, Paul broke his hand in one moment and Griffin aggravated a troublesome quad injury the next and suddenly both were gone for the rest of the playoffs.

With both players gone, the rest of the playoffs lasted just two more games.

“This is no lie,” said Crawford, who signed with the Wolves last summer after the Clippers traded him to Atlanta in a summer makeover and the Hawks bought out his contract. “Within a five-minute stretch, you lose your two best players. Like, in the playoffs. It doesn’t happen in October and they have time to come back in January or February. Within a five-minute stretch, we lost our two best players. Things like that, they were just fluke things.”

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