Former Los Angeles Clippers standout Lou Williams preceded his statement by assuring that he is not looking for excuses, over six years removed from the event.

However, speaking on the Cousins podcast — hosted by Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady — Williams opened up about the team's struggles during that unfortunate week in the Orlando bubble.

Williams cited the ongoing fight against social injustice at the time, the allure of the bubble being mostly financial, and the players' ultimate desire to be home with their families as the main reasons for the Clippers blowing a 3-1 lead to Denver in the Western Conference semifinals.

Granted, everybody in there had to endure the same circumstances. But that can be tougher to handle for some than for others. 

The Clippers were in cruise control, one win away from the West finals, when their — no pun intended — bubble was popped. 

Although Los Angeles was heavily favored going into the series, the Nuggets were battle-tested. And in beating the Clippers, they became the second team in NBA history to overcome multiple 3-1 deficits in a single postseason. Denver also did it against the Utah Jazz in the first round.

Williams said that the bubble was unique in that one bad week ended their season in what felt like an instant.

The Nuggets roared all the way back to tie up the series before dominating Game 7 en route to a 104-89 win.

Per Williams, the Clippers had "one foot in and one foot out" at that point, and it showed. Kawhi Leonard and Paul George were held to a combined 24 points on 10-for-38 shooting. They scored a total of 15 points in the second half as the Clippers were outscored 50-33.

Williams had seven points on 3-for-11 from the field in 25 minutes off the bench.

In the end, the only Clipper who showed up was Montrezl Harrell, who dropped 20 points (7-10 FG) off the pine. 

The Nuggets were fueled by a 40-point eruption from Jamal Murray and a 16-point, 22-rebound, and 13-assist triple-double from the ascending Nikola Jokic.

Denver limited Los Angeles to just a 38 percent success rate from the field — 26 percent from three-point range. In essence, it was the Clippers' week-long collapse summed up in 48 minutes. 

"We gave away three straight games," Williams said. "In the time that we gave away three straight games, we had so many different distractions around us. I'm not going to make any excuses for us; I'm going to be very clear about that. What's happened has happened.

"But if you're asking me in retrospect what the cause of us not getting there was, the week that we lost, we had a bunch of distractions from a lot of different places."

Williams added that the Clippers were on the same page entering the bubble, until they weren't. In hindsight, he thinks that if they were able to focus only on themselves when they were in there, they would have gotten over the line. But it wasn't to be.

It's forever going to be a what-if whether that was actually the Clippers' year or not.

They were certainly well set up to make a real run at the championship, though. That was proven the following year, when they were finally able to reach the Conference Finals. However, an untimely season-ending injury to Leonard derailed that advance.

The most devastating takeaway from all of this — for Clippers fans — is that those two years were likely the last time they will see their team in top-end contention for a while.