The NBA / Chris Baker : For Now, Chaney Isn’t Lame Duck

Don Chaney, coach of the woeful Clippers, is nicknamed Duck.

Before the season started, a friend of Chaney picked out a poster for him as a joke. It showed a duck sitting on a lawn chair with bullets whizzing past.

Is Chaney a lame-duck coach?

Not yet. Duck hunting season apparently hasn’t opened in Clipperland yet.

Chaney’s injury-depleted Clippers have lost nine straight games, the league’s longest losing streak this season. They have gone 21 days without winning. They and the New Jersey Nets have the worst records in the league (3-12).

Net Coach Dave Wohl thought about quitting last week, saying that he wasn’t having an impact on the team.

And New York Knick Coach Hubie Brown was fired Monday because his team is off to a 4-12 start.

But Chaney’s job appears to be safe.

“I’d probably be in the same situation as Wohl and Brown if it weren’t for the injuries,” Chaney said. “We had a lot of injuries last year, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Elgin Baylor, the club’s general manager, said it’s unfair to judge Chaney based on how the Clippers have played this season because the coach hasn’t been able to put an uninjured team on the court.

If the injuries keep piling up, Baylor, 52, and Chaney, 40, may be forced to come out of retirement and don uniforms.

“Their injury list has more talent than their roster,” Laker center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said of the Clippers.

The Clippers have lost Norm Nixon, Marques Johnson, Darnell Valentine and Larry Drew to injuries.

The situation has gotten so bad that the Clippers have had trouble finding enough healthy players to practice.

The Clipper offense has been crippled as a result of the injuries.

Last season, the Clippers averaged 108.6 points a game, 16th in the NBA. They are missing their top three scorers from last season because of injuries and trades.

Johnson averaged 20.3 points a game, and Nixon averaged 14.6. Derek Smith, who was traded to Sacramento in the off-season for Drew and Mike Woodson, averaged 23.5.

How many NBA teams could survive if they had to make up 58.4 points a game?

Said Chaney: “I’m going with a cut-down squad. There’s nothing I can do.

“I can only be satisfied with doing the best job I can do as a coach. I think everyone in the whole league knows how many injuries we’ve had. And we’ve been going up against more talented teams lately.”

Said forward Michael Cage: “Don’s a very good coach and a good man and that means a lot to me. If everything else fails, I think of him because I know he believes in us.

“We’re not playing well right now and it’s frustrating. But we can’t give up. We’re going to get better as a team. I have a lot of faith in the team and I’m not going to give up. Ever. We haven’t fully adjusted to Marques being gone, and Drew has been gone for a couple of games. We keep adjusting and readjusting. It’s very hard to get something going when that happens.”

Chaney came under fire last December, but he rode out the crisis. Baylor’s first act after he was hired last April was to rehire Chaney.

“I felt more pressure last season,” Chaney said.

Richie Adubato waited 20 years to become a head coach. Then he blew his big chance and he may not get another.

A career assistant coach, Adubato replaced Dick Vitale as head coach of the Detroit Pistons 12 games into the 1979-80 season.

Adubato finished the season with a 12-58 record and was fired.

He returned as an assistant coach with the New York Knicks. He moved to Dallas last summer to replace assistant Bob Weiss, who left to become the head coach of the San Antonio Spurs.

Adubato said he has been interviewed for several head coaching jobs, but guess what keeps coming up in interviews?

“I had a good shot at getting the Cleveland job last summer,” Adubato said. “But they brought up what happened in Detroit.

“We had seven rookies on that team (the 1979-80 Pistons). They played hard, but they were still rookies.”

Trivia time: Why is Chuck Person, the Indiana Pacers’ rookie forward, nicknamed Rifleman?

Person, whose full name is Chuck Connors Person, was named after the star of the 1957-62 “Rifleman” TV series.

After three years with the Dallas Mavericks, Dale Ellis has found a new home with the Seattle SuperSonics.

Ellis, a 6-7 forward, was acquired from Dallas last July for guard Al Wood because the Mavericks had a glut at small forward.

The Sonics have moved Ellis from forward to guard, and he’s flourishing in his new role. And the SuperSonics, who have won just 31 games in each of the last two seasons, are off to their best start in four years.

Ellis scored a career-high 35 points in a 117-107 win against the Clippers last Tuesday, then scored 34 points and had 8 rebounds in a 117-104 win over Phoenix last Saturday.

“Dale is making a good start at off-guard,” Seattle Coach Bernie Bickerstaff said. “He’s playing unselfishly.”

Said Ellis: “The most important move in my career was coming to Seattle. I was logjammed into a situation where there just weren’t enough minutes for me to play (in Dallas). But I was traded to a young team that was rebuilding and I got a chance to get in on the ground floor.”