The date was Dec. 20. It was the day everything changed for the Los Angeles Clippers.
Kawhi Leonard has been the leading scorer in the NBA since, averaging 31.8 points per game. James Harden has averaged 25.1 points in that stretch. The Clippers have the best scoring differential in the Western Conference over that span. They've been rolling.
This is where Robert Flom enters the story.
Flom is a blogger who covers the Clippers, and Dec. 20 was when he wrote the following on X: "If they go 15-3 in any stretch this season will print and eat this tweet.”
The Clippers have gone 15-3 since. True to his word, Flom printed the tweet Monday and ate it.
“Pretty crunchy,” he said.
Social media wasn't around in 1953 or 1985, which means it's highly unlikely anyone in Baltimore or Cleveland had to endure a crunchy moment like the one Flom put himself through on Monday night.
The 1952-53 Baltimore Bullets got into the playoffs by finishing fourth in a five-team division, in a year when eight of the NBA's 10 teams made the postseason. The 1984-85 Cleveland Cavaliers got into the playoffs despite spending more than three months of that season holding down last place in the Eastern Conference.
Both teams started those seasons with 6-21 records. Of the 121 teams that started an NBA season with a record that bad or worse, including five this season, those Bullets (who finished 16-54) and Cavaliers (who finished 36-46) are the only two that wound up reaching the postseason.
The Clippers started 6-21 this season. The playoffs were a million miles away. Not anymore.
Going into Tuesday's game at Utah, the Clippers are three games under .500 at 21-24. They are only 10th in the West, but that would be enough to get them into the play-in tournament and give them a chance at a playoff berth.
For a team that was a half-game out of last place in the West a couple of days before Christmas, just getting back to play-in range this soon represents a minor miracle.
“We’re confident, we’re playing well, but we've still got to play better,” Clippers coach Tyronn Lue said after Sunday's 126-89 romp over the Brooklyn Nets. "We still have to run through the tape and continue to execute the right way. ... Overall, we’re playing well. We’ve got to keep it going.”
The Clippers, to their credit, were aware of Flom's tweet. The Clippers' social media team had a blast with it — all in good fun, like the tweet itself — and players couldn't help but react when they got that 15th win in 18 games that ensured Flom would be chewing on paper for a half-hour or so.
“We gotta get him on camera,” Lue said.
“I don't know how healthy that is for you,” Leonard said.
Clippers fans got into the act as well, chanting “eat the tweet” during Sunday's game. It's a feel-good story, such as it is. And there have been a few of those in the NBA this season.
Among them: Toronto started slowly but is vying for home-court advantage in Round 1 of the playoffs now. BetMGM Sportsbook had Phoenix's over-under for wins this season at 30.5; the Suns have already won 27 games. The Celtics, even without Jayson Tatum, are No. 2 in the East, something few outside Boston probably expected.
The Clippers were supposed to be good, like title-contending good. Starting 6-21 was beyond unexpected. Then again, so was the turnaround. And the tweet is a neat part of why everyone seems happy in Clipperland these days, after tons of drama going back to the summer.
There was a probe of whether a business relationship between Leonard and a California company was legitimate or merely a way for the Clippers to circumvent salary cap rules, then Chris Paul being sent home in a stunning early December move, and a whole lot of losing.
Now, there's a whole lot of winning. For the record, Flom now says the Clippers will finish 45-37. The way they're playing, he might not have to eat those words.
Around The NBA analyzes the biggest topics in the NBA during the season.
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Los Angeles Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard (2) fakes a shot against Brooklyn Nets guard Ben Saraf during the second half of an NBA basketball game Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026, in Inglewood, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran's bloody crackdown on nationwide protests killed at least 6,126 people while many others still are feared dead, activists said Tuesday, as a U.S. aircraft carrier group arrived in the Middle East to lead any American military response to the crisis. Iran's currency, the rial, meanwhile fell to a record low of 1.5 million to $1.
The arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and guided missile destroyers accompanying it provide the U.S. the ability to strike Iran, particularly as Gulf Arab states have signaled they want to stay out of any attack despite hosting American military personnel.
Two Iranian-backed militias in the Mideast have signaled their willingness to launch new attacks, likely trying to back Iran after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened military action over the killing of peaceful protesters or Tehran launching mass executions in the wake of the demonstrations.
Iran has repeatedly threatened to drag the entire Mideast into a war, though its air defenses and military are still reeling after the June war launched by Israel against the country. But the pressure on its economy may spark new unrest as everyday goods slowly go out of reach of its people.
The new figures Tuesday came from the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in multiple rounds of unrest in Iran. The group verifies each death with a network of activists on the ground in Iran.
It identified the dead as including at least 5,777 protesters, 214 government-affiliated forces, 86 children and 49 civilians who weren't demonstrating. The crackdown has seen over 41,800 arrests, it added.
The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the death toll given authorities cutting off the internet and disrupting calls into the Islamic Republic.
Iran’s government has put the death toll at a far lower 3,117, saying 2,427 were civilians and security forces, and labeled the rest “terrorists.” In the past, Iran’s theocracy has undercounted or not reported fatalities from unrest.
That death toll exceeds that of any other round of protest or unrest there in decades, and recalls the chaos surrounding Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The protests in Iran began on Dec. 28, sparked by the fall of the Iranian currency, the rial, and quickly spread across the country. They were met by a violent crackdown by Iran’s theocracy, the scale of which is only starting to become clear as the country has faced more than two weeks of internet blackout — the most comprehensive in its history.
Iran’s U.N. ambassador told a U.N. Security Council meeting late Monday that Trump’s repeated threats to use military force against the country “are neither ambiguous nor misinterpreted.” Amir Saeid Iravani also repeated allegations that the U.S. leader incited violence by “armed terrorist groups” supported by the United States and Israel, but gave no evidence to support his claims.
Iranian state media has tried to accuse forces abroad for the protests as the theocracy remains broadly unable to address the country's ailing economy, which is still squeezed by international sanctions, particularly over its nuclear program.
On Tuesday, exchange shops offered the record-low rial-to-dollar rate in Tehran.
Already, Iran has vastly limited its subsidized currency rates to cut down on corruption. It also has offered the equivalent of $7 a month to most people in the country to cover rising costs. However, Iran's people have seen the rial fall from 32,000 to $1 just a decade ago — which has devoured the value of their savings.
Iran projected its power across the Mideast through the “Axis of Resistance,” a network of proxy militant groups in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq, and other places. It was also seen as a defensive buffer, intended to keep conflict away from Iranian borders. But it has collapsed after Israel targeted Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon and others during the Gaza war. Meanwhile, rebels in 2024 overthrew Syria’s Bashar Assad after a yearslong, bloody war in which Iran backed his rule.
Yemen's Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, have repeatedly warned they could resume fire if needed on shipping in the Red Sea, releasing old footage of a previous attack Monday. Ahmad “Abu Hussein” al-Hamidawi, the leader of Iraq's Kataib Hezbollah militia, warned "the enemies that the war on the (Islamic) Republic will not be a picnic; rather, you will taste the bitterest forms of death, and nothing will remain of you in our region.”
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, one of Iran’s staunchest allies, refused to say how it planned to react in the case of a possible attack.
“During the past two months, several parties have asked me a clear and frank question: If Israel and America go to war against Iran, will Hezbollah intervene or not?” Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Kassem said in a video address.
He said the group is preparing for “possible aggression and is determined to defend” against it. But as to how it would act, he said, “these details will be determined by the battle and we will determine them according to the interests that are present.”
Associated Press writers Edith Lederer at the United Nations and Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.
A Hezbollah supporter waves an Iranian flag during a rally to show their solidarity with the Iranian government, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
This photo provided by the U.S. Navy shows sailors preparing a Boeing EA-18G Growler on the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the Indian Ocean on Jan. 21, 2026. (Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Daniel Kimmelman/U.S. Navy via AP)
Vehicles drive past portrait of the late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, left, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in downtown Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
People walk in front a billboard with graphic showing a U.S aircraft carrier with damaged fighter jets on its deck, and sign reading in Farsi and English: "If you sow the wind, you'll reap whirlwind," at the Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) square, in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
