He hasn’t lost his spirit

‘Novak for the win,” Ralph Lawler says, his deep voice climbing up the sound ladder with each syllable, in perfect rhythm with Steve Novak’s three-point shot as it arcs and settles into the net.

As time runs out, there is Lawler’s voice, sweet sounding as any symphony, musical and exuberant and just so heartfelt.

BIIIIINNNGOOO.

It is as if the Clippers won the NBA title, a surprise release of joy, the signature one-word exclamation of childlike wonder from this 70-year-old play-by-play man who has seen much more losing than winning, with a team that makes an NBA season feel like years instead of months.

In fact, this win over the New Jersey Nets last month was just the Clippers’ 16th.

Bob Miller, the hockey Hall of Fame broadcaster for the Kings, says there is no harder job than calling the action of an awful team, game after game, minute after endless minute.

Lawler has been doing that for the Clippers for 30 years, but the losses -- 1,583 -- have not defeated him.

Straight-backed and broad-shouldered, with a tan perfected by the desert sun at his La Quinta home, Lawler loves being the voice of the Clippers, who are 19-62 with one game left. Only his white hair and mustache hint at his age. Before a recent game, he walks around Staples Center with steps so long -- he’s 6-foot-2 -- that people have to run to catch up. He is looking forward to the next four hours because, he says, the Clippers still could win.

“It’s always more fun to do the winning broadcast, of course,” he says. “But there’s a certain satisfaction in knowing that you’re prepared whether they win or lose.”

The losses he knows well. One dismal season after another, the Clippers have closed out April with a string of losses more often than not.

For good teams the month of April is usually about fighting for a playoff spot or fine-tuning for a title run. Usually for the Clippers, that isn’t the case. Between the 1982-83 season and last season, the Clippers were a woeful 80-174 in April. On Monday night they lost again, making them 1-6 this month, their playoff hopes long gone. After tonight’s game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Clippers will just be glad the season is over.

Yet, every April, there is Lawler, studying his notes, checking the stats, finding what he refers to as “interesting tidbits” for his viewers.

He may be the voice of losing in a world where winning is everything, but you wouldn’t know it listening to him.

When Novak -- who is polite and hard working and a little undistinguished, which makes him a perfect Clipper -- knocked down that three-pointer, Lawler’s words were as exacting as the shot.

His words always are, making even the Clippers worth your time. For example:

“Oh, no,” he says, “that ball just trickled out of the reach of Zach Randolph.”

Or, “The Clippers are in desperate need of a win tonight.”

Lawler says that a lot.

“It is impossible to be optimistic about the 10 guys Coach Dunleavy had on the floor tonight.”

Lawler doesn’t sugarcoat. He is not irresponsibly positive after the Clippers’ collection of castoffs, fill-ins and backups get walloped, even by Oklahoma City, a team with a record as execrable as the Clippers.

“There is no reason for me to not tell the truth or try to hide the truth,” Lawler says. “I love covering this team, but the idea of covering it means telling the fans the truth. If the truth isn’t positive, it’s not my job to make it positive.”

Yet Lawler’s 80-year-old sister, Jean Bell, calls him “relentlessly optimistic.”

Lawler grew up in Peoria, Ill., where his father owned a chain of movie theaters and where his mother encouraged her children to be appreciative of words. Lawler figures he never had a choice. His life was given over to words so he could keep up with his father, who spoke to any group that asked.

In high school, though, Lawler played basketball -- loved the game, its statistics, its angles, its beauty. But his on-court days ended at Bradley University in his hometown.

“The reality was obvious,” he says. “I was a speaker, not a player.”

At the time the voice of the Bradley Braves was Chick Hearn, and Lawler dreamed of following in Hearn’s footsteps.

Lawler later worked at a Peoria radio station, which bid for Bradley basketball. “If we’d gotten that contract,” Lawler says, “I imagine I’d still be doing Bradley Braves basketball. I’d have been there 50 years, happy as can be.”

“This isn’t where the Clippers expected to be at this point of the season.”

Lawler says this during a recent game at Staples, the 52nd loss of the season. It is not the first time he has said this.

The numbers are stark: The Lawler-era Clippers have only 844 wins so far out of 2,427 regular-season games and a mere 25 playoff games. In contrast, the Lakers, across those same seasons, have been in 371 playoff games.

When he was young, Lawler never imagined he would be calling so many losses. He left that job in Peoria to work at a radio station in Riverside -- a 20-something broadcaster with the voice of a Shakespearean actor and the willingness to prepare for hours a day to do a junior college basketball game.

When he was offered a job at a 50,000-watt radio station in Philadelphia, Lawler went East. He did Flyers hockey and 76ers basketball but then was made a sports anchor. He felt so miscast, though, that when he was offered a job in San Diego for half the salary he came West again.

To the San Diego Clippers.

“What are you going to do when you leave here?” Lawler asks the newest Clipper, Bill Walton. “I’m off to have surgery on my ankle,” he replied. “Oh me, oh my,” Lawler says.

Lawler remembers that interview in 1979 when Walton signed with the Clippers.

“We had gutted our roster to get Bill Walton,” Lawler says. “On the day we bring Bill in for the first news conference at the old Sports Arena, I’m sitting with Bill. The media’s all there, airplanes are pulling banners along the beach, there’s huge headlines in the papers.”

Then came that answer.

“That was the precursor,” Lawler says of the unexpected surgery. “That’s the Clippers.”

As good as Lawler is, there is one thing missing. He isn’t in the broadcaster wing of the NBA Hall of Fame.

“Unbelievable mistake,” says Walton, who became a noted broadcaster himself, for which he credits Lawler.

Lawler will say only this: “Just because you’re broadcasting a team that doesn’t win shouldn’t mean your work is overlooked.”

Frank Furino, a director for ABC Sports, calls Lawler the dean of NBA announcers.

“Hall of Fame? It should be embarrassed Ralph isn’t there. I think he is overlooked because (A) of the bad team and (B) because all those years he worked in the shadow of Chick Hearn and the Lakers.”

Former Clippers star Elton Brand, now a 76er, agreed.

“With his wit and dedication to the game, absolutely, this man should be in the Hall of Fame,” Brand said. That he isn’t, Brand thinks, is because Lawler has spent his broadcast life with a losing team.

“When I was playing there,” Brand says, “Ralph was going to broadcast his 2,000th game as a Clipper announcer. All the players got together and we said, ‘This man is part of our family, part of our team, let’s dedicate this game to him.’ I think we lost the game though. I guess that’s typical.”

Brand says players all over the league know Lawler’s catch phrases: “Bingo” for a three-pointer, “Oh me, oh my,” and “Lawler’s Law,” which asserts that the first team to score 100 wins. Lawler says he’s done the research -- thanks to a tip by 76ers trainer Al Domenico -- and evidence shows that the law is correct more than 90% of the time.

Brand has one last one: “Fasten your seat belts, gang, we’re going down to the wire.”

“I guess he doesn’t get to use that one much,” Brand says.

“I’ve been Clipperized.”

His viewers have heard this before. It is why he stays. And Lawler says if he wasn’t broadcasting the Clippers, he probably would be back doing Bradley basketball games.

“I’ve had two or three teams inquire about my availability over the years,” he says. “I never seriously considered it. It would be like leaving your family for a family that had a nicer home or drove a bigger car.”

Lawler has had some great moments with the Clippers. Game 4 against Utah in the 1992 playoffs is his favorite. The L.A. riots had thrown the series into chaos.

“Finally, on Sunday, May 3, the game was rescheduled for the Anaheim Convention Center. Clippers Vice President Carl Lahr, to the surprise of the players, had the team’s Sports Arena court reassembled at the Anaheim venue. They went on to beat the Jazz behind Danny Manning’s brilliance and forced a Game 5.”

The Clippers lost Game 5.

With him through all the wins and losses is Jo, his third wife. The two of them are sitting at home, surrounded by photos of their combined families, children and grandchildren. Lawler says he courted Jo “forever” before she warmed to his sense of humor. She already loved basketball.

On a rare Sunday off, Jo suggests they watch a Lakers game or a Spurs game or any game. She is at all the away games and likes to note that it was she who suggested Mike Smith could be the Clippers broadcast analyst.

“He became my teacher,” Smith says of Lawler. “Three times a week, we’d have class. He would come to my house. For example, he would tell me to think of five different ways to describe common basketball terms. Court, for example. I’d say, ’96 feet of hardwood,’ and he’d say, ‘OK, give me another four.’ ”

Michael Eaves, who does pregame and postgame Clippers shows, holds up an 8-by-14-inch paper covered with statistics, names of players, coaches, assistant coaches, trainers and those “tidbits” Lawler likes. Lawler created the format.

For a Clippers game against the Golden State Warriors, under the name Kelenna Azubuike, it says, “Clippers gave him an offer sheet/GS matched/25 years.”

At the bottom of the sheet it reads: “Warriors, charter member of the NBA. Joined as Philadelphia 76ers in 1946 and Won the 1st-ever NBA title in 1947.”

Viewers heard all that information during that telecast.

Lawler became a relentless note-taker years ago, after interviewing a local golf official.

“We sat down, and my mind went blank,” Lawler says. “I couldn’t remember his name. I was going on, ‘I have here a man who’s won several local tournaments, who is an icon on the local golf scene, on and on.’ I never forgot that feeling in your stomach when you forget a name. Believe me, if I was to interview my wife, Jo, I would have in front of me a piece of paper that said, ‘Jo, my wife.’ ”

One last thing. Guess how many games Lawler has missed in 30 years: Zero.

He even did one broadcast despite having a kidney stone. “I passed it after the game,” Lawler says matter of factly.

“When I got this job in 1978, I knew it was the last job I ever wanted to have,” he says. “I am a Clipper for life.”

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diane.pucin@latimes.com