LOS ANGELES -- If watching "Mad Men" the past seven years has taught us anything it's that you can't change who you are. The Los Angeles Clippers remain the Los Angeles Clippers, the Houston Rockets are the Houston Rockets, for better or for worse. And has it ever felt worse for the Los Angeles Clippers?

Playing at home with a 19-point lead and a quarter and a half left to get to the Western Conference finals, their past caught up with them and it all came crashing down in a 119-107 loss to Houston in Game 6 on Thursday. It wasn't their decades of futility, or even their recent knack for failing to close playoff series early the past four seasons. This was about the weaker attributes of the 2014-15 Clippers rearing its head at the worst possible time.

This was a team that struggled to stake a claim as true championship contenders during the regular season. Whenever they had flashes, such as back-to-back home wins against Houston and San Antonio in February, they'd take a step backward with something like back-to-back losses to Memphis and Houston the next week. It's similar to the setback they suffered by losing Games 5 and 6 of this series after the quantum leap of winning Games 6 and 7 against the San Antonio Spurs in the first round.

The Clippers finished 9-10 against the other five teams in the top six of the Western Conference. (The Golden State Warriors, by comparison, finished 13-4 against the other five contenders).

The Clippers weren't among the top 10 in points allowed or opponents' field-goal percentage, typical indicators of championship-worthiness. Defense isn't habitual to them, it's something that they do in stretches when they're focused on it.

So the defense wasn't there for them in the first half of Game 6, when they gave up 62 points to the Rockets to virtually nullify the 64 points the Clippers scored themselves. And then the defense was non-existent in the fourth quarter, when the Rockets made 63 percent of their shots, 63 percent of their 3-pointers and scored 40 -- forty -- points.

"We took the ball out a lot," was DeAndre Jordan's summary of what happened to the Clippers in their disastrous fourth quarter.

The bench was a weakness that seemingly had been hidden by Austin Rivers' standout play this season and even some contributions from the nearly forgotten Spencer Hawes. But Rivers, Hawes, Glen Davis and Jamal Crawford managed only 16 points in Game 6 -- or one more than Rockets reserve Corey Brewer scored in the fourth quarter alone.

And what business did the Rockets have pulling off this stunning comeback? It's easy to forget they won a Southwest Division filled with playoff teams to secure the No. 2 seed in the West. That divisional victory was the tie-breaker that gave them Game 7 at home, by the way.

Houston was a better rebounding team than the Clippers this season, even with Dwight Howard missing half the season. With Howard on the court for 40 minutes, energized, engaged and grabbing 21 rebounds, the Rockets outrebounded the Clippers 60-41.

Or maybe there's something to franchise DNA, something to wearing a jersey no matter how many times the design changes.

Only a handful of teams have enough history and magic moments to produce a video this long and this goose bump-inducing. (It might be my favorite video I've seen at any arena.)

Only eight teams have ever come back from a 3-1 deficit to win a series, and one of them was the 1995 Rockets.

But back to this squad. Even though they've never been past the second round together, they feature four players who played in the NBA Finals elsewhere: Howard, James Harden, Trevor Ariza and Jason Terry.

"What we showed tonight was that we have the resolve, and we have championship heart," Terry said.

The Rockets finished the season with 56 wins despite injuries to Howard, Patrick Beverley and Donatas Motiejunas. After living among the West's elite for most of the year they slipped to the lower half of the playoff bracket in the final week, only to win their final three games to lock up the second spot.

"We fought through a lot of adversity," Josh Smith said. "It's just a testament of what we did throughout the season."

The playoffs are all about getting back to what you do well in the regular season. It becomes a bigger challenge, with teams locked in on your tendencies and familiar with the way you play (notice how hard it has been for Atlanta's Kyle Korver to get open looks lately). But if you can find your way back to your way, you can prevail. That's how the Warriors regained the series against the Memphis Grizzlies, and it's why the Rockets have extended this series to seven games.

The Rockets returned. The Clippers, meanwhile, reverted.