They Take Some Heat, Deservedly

A highly disconsolate Donald T. Sterling stood in the runway leading from the basketball floor to the locker rooms at the L.A. Sports Arena Wednesday night.

Like a lot of rich men, Donald Sterling likes to own only the best--fine foreign cars, a place at the beach, tailor-made suits. To that end, he has bought downtown Beverly Hills, good stocks and a company here and there listed on the Big Board.

He also bought the Los Angeles Clippers, probably the nation’s most dedicated group of underachievers, on the mistaken notion that they were a pro basketball team.

They’re a team but it’s hard to define the activity they engage in as pro basketball.

This was shockingly brought home to owner Sterling Wednesday night as his team airily lost a game to a team that had never won one in its history.

It was kind of an awesome achievement in its own way:

--It required a total of 23 relatively unforced turnovers. Two more and you got a bakery.

--It required more or less total lack of concentration.

--It required complete indifference to what was going on around you, particularly offensive rebounding.

--And it required a whole lot of standing around like a bunch of guys waiting for a bus or a post office to open. Two more periods and pigeons would have tried to alight on their shoulders.

Sterling was inconsolable.

“It was the worst game I have ever seen,” he said. “We had no fire. We weren’t motivated. We had 5 spectators on the floor.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to do.”

He turned to a friend. “What would Jack Kent Cooke do?” he wanted to know.

Jack Kent Cooke is the patron saint of basketball owners everywhere. In 1965, he bought the Los Angeles Lakers for $5.175 million, a then-unheard of price for an NBA team that had been bankrupt in Minneapolis only 5 years before.

But Cooke knew that he was getting for his money not only a one-of-a-kind franchise in one of the world’s most valuable markets but he was also getting Elgin Baylor and Jerry West, which was like acquiring the Kohinoor diamond and a Tintoretto painting at one auction.

That wasn’t enough for Cooke. He later conned the league into letting him get Wilt Chamberlain, and still later maneuvered his way into Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. His foundling franchise was worth 10 times what he paid for it when he sold it.

Donald Sterling thought he had crossed his threshold when he won the league lottery earlier this year and got the rights to one of the most celebrated collegiate players of the last decade.

So far as basketball was concerned, Danny Manning was wrapped in swaddling clothes right after birth, and wise men came from afar to see him. He was going to be a savior for a franchise that won only 17 games all last season and only 12 the season before. The Clippers put him on billboards and the cover of the team press guide before he had played a game--in fact, before he had even signed a contract.

It was Cooke’s formula but not Cooke’s broth. Get the best player available and stand back. It isn’t working for Sterling. Manning is averaging a respectable 15 points a night, he is rebounding respectably for a rookie but he is hardly dominating.

Donald Sterling has to be asking himself why he didn’t buy a bank instead.

Basketball used to be a game in which one man could make not a difference but the difference. Usually, it had to be a man in the pivot--Bill Russell, Bill Walton, Wilt Chamberlain, Abdul-Jabbar.

Can one man do it anymore?

Well, Pat Ewing, who was even more coveted than Danny Manning in his lottery year, has hardly turned the Knicks into the New York Yankees of basketball, as he was expected to do. Michael Jordan is one of the world’s great soloists but the Chicago Bulls don’t scare anybody. Akeem Olajuwon could rebound the moon but the Houston Rockets don’t put you in mind of the Russell Celtics.

It’s hard to believe, looking at them, but someone once swapped the Boston Celtics for the Clippers. They were the Buffalo Braves then. Celtic owner Irv Levin wanted a franchise in Southern California. So, by the time Donald Sterling got the old Buffalo Braves, they were the San Diego Clippers.

By any other name, they weren’t roses. This is a franchise that has been over .500 only 4 times in its history on 2 coasts. This may mark the 10th straight time under .500 for a season.

Everybody in the Sports Arena knew what the Clippers’ play should have been Wednesday night. With 12 seconds to play, trailing by a point, you in-bound the ball to your best player and let him clear out for a game-winning basket.

The Clippers inbounded the ball to Benoit Benjamin.

He seemed as stunned as everybody else in the building at this development and stood there like a guy who has just been handed the swag by a bunch of bank robbers when they hear the cops coming.

Benjamin is not as bad a player as everybody thinks. But he’s close. By the time he had dealt the ball off to Norm Nixon, who should have had it in the first place, there was barely time for Nixon to throw up the predictable brick at the buzzer.

It was a vintage Clipper performance. They did what they do best: find a way to lose. And owner Sterling sat there like a guy who has just been hit over the head with a sash weight.

Against a team that had never won a game, his juggernaut had rolled up 88 whole points, had been out-shot, 38-34; out-rebounded, 39-37, and out-hustled in steals, 12-9. The Clippers, however, had managed to out-turnover the Heat, 23-20.

“What would you do?” Sterling asked gloomily. “I just don’t know what to do.”

Personally, I’d see if I could get the Celtics back for them.