PLAYA VISTA – Doc Rivers beamed as he hoisted the trophy and cameras gathered around to capture the moment.

“You never thought I’d earn this, did you?” the Clippers coach said.

Then Rivers set one of the most iconic prizes in sports back on the table inside the Clippers’ practice facility. The Claret Jug, which for nearly 150 years has been awarded to the golfer who wins the Open Championship, was on a coast-to-coast American promotional tour in advance of July’s tournament at Royal Birkdale.

On Thursday, that included a trip to Playa Vista and into the arms of Rivers, an avid golfer.

This was not exactly what the Clippers had in mind when they first gathered back in September with talk of collecting championship hardware. The timing, however, was fitting.

Rivers’ team was two days away from commencing its latest pursuit of the Larry O’Brien Trophy, awarded each spring to the NBA champions, with a best-of-7, first-round playoff series against the Utah Jazz.

The Clippers, who closed the regular season on a seven-game winning streak and are seeded fourth in the Western Conference, will host the fifth-seeded Jazz at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday.

“It’s what we’ve been waiting for,” Rivers said.

It is no secret that the Clippers have fallen painfully short of that goal, sometimes in spectacular fashion. Despite a roster perennially loaded with superstars, the Clippers – who finished the regular season 51-31 – have never advanced beyond the second round. Before last season, they got to the conference semifinals in consecutive seasons before sputtering to humbling ends.

“We haven’t won a championship,” forward Blake Griffin said, “but also know that it doesn’t come that easily. Sometimes you have to keep fighting for yourself. It’s not something that we’re like, ‘Oh, poor us,’ like we’re cursed.”

Instead, Griffin said, series losses to Houston, Oklahoma City and, last year, to Portland have only increased “that desire, that fire to win a championship.”

For J.J. Redick, last season’s first-round exit, brought on by season-ending injuries to Griffin and Chris Paul, was no different from his previous nine trips to the playoffs – none of which ended in with a title.

“You don’t win the championship and you’re disappointed and you’re heartbroken and it takes a few weeks to process,” he said. “That was the experience last year for that.”

What others see as playoff follies and evidence that the Clippers are doomed to repeat history, Rivers, who coached the Boston Celtics to the 2008 title, sees as part of the franchise’s journey to the top.

“The journey’s the best part,” he said. “It really is. It’s awesome. The other stuff after that, you get a parade, you get all that and that’s all nice, but when I look back on winning, I think more about the journey than actual Game 6 when we won it.”

The Clippers’ journey could culminate this season in one of several ways. Griffin, Redick and Paul will all be free agents, setting up a potentially gutting offseason if those veteran stars determine their chances of winning a title are better elsewhere.

Rivers has described this as the best Clippers team he has coached, with a deeper, more veteran bench. Austin Rivers, a top reserve along with Jamal Crawford, is expected back sometime around the time the series moves to Utah for Games 3 and 4.

“One through five you could argue with Austin back that this is our deepest group,” Griffin said. “All that doesn’t mean anything unless you win.”

Even if the Clippers can get through the Jazz, a top three rebounding team and one of the league’s top defenses, the vaunted Golden State Warriors will likely be waiting in the second round.

The top-seeded Warriors have beaten the Clippers in 10 straight regular-season games.

“You understand it’s the playoffs and anything can happen,” Griffin said. “The best part about our past is we’ve been in so many different situations. We’ve been up on Houston 3-1 (in 2014) and not been able to pull it out, so I think it definitely makes you realize that nothing is guaranteed.”

That’s why the Clippers believe, against the odds, that the playoffs can end just like they began: holding up the trophy.