Barkley Gives Clippers a Big Dose of Reality

Maybe there is something about the City of Brotherly Love.

Or maybe, there is just something about season openers for the Clippers.

They began a season of great optimism with another crash to reality Friday night, losing to Charles Barkley and the Philadelphia 76ers, 129-110, before a crowd of 13,468 at the Spectrum.

The numbers keep mounting. The Clippers have lost 16 of their last 17 to the 76ers and have not won here since the 1975-76 season, when the franchise was the Buffalo Braves.

It was reminiscent of last season when they opened by being bombed for 139 points in a loss to the Nuggets at Denver.

Barkley, the round mound of rebound, was big all over. He scored 33 points. He hit 13 of 16 shots from the free-throw line. He made 10 of 18 shots, playing especially well inside against a young team that ignored the defensive game plan of Coach Gene Shue all night.

And then he got down on himself, mainly because of those 8 misfires.

“I should have had 50 points tonight,” he said. “I must have missed 5 layups.”

Most people would be happy with those numbers, someone said.

“That’s right,” Barkley replied. “That’s why most guys are losers.”

Oh.

The Clippers, though not the first team to be dissected by Barkley, made things easier for the 76er star, who is coming off a season in which he finished fourth in the National Basketball Assn. in scoring (28.3 points a game), sixth in rebounding (11.9) and third in field-goal accuracy (.587).

The instructions from Shue were to double-team Barkey with help from one of the guards, but do not front him--and do not let him get behind the defender with a clear path to the basket.

So then they went out and did it anyway.

“We never even talked about fronting him, and we get in battles and all of the sudden we’re fronting Charles Barkley,” Shue said.

Said Clipper rookie forward Charles Smith, simply: “We just didn’t stick to the game plan.”

The Clippers, who opened on the road for the sixth straight season, lost control of the game in the last 5 1/2 minutes of the first half, when Philadelphia’s 49-45 lead was increased to 68-53 at intermission. The 76ers finished the second quarter with a 15-4 run, guard Hersey Hawkins scoring 6 points en route to finishing with 20 in his pro debut.

The Clippers cut the lead to 8 points several times in the third quarter but never challenged beyond that. It was 99-85 going into the fourth.

“Obviously we weren’t ready as a whole, whether it was the younger guys or the older guys,” Clipper veteran center Greg Kite said.

Indeed, youth was served on a team that began the year with an average age of 24.7, not counting No. 1 draft pick Danny Manning, who watched the game off the satellite dish at the Ohio home of agent Ron Grinker.

But there was something to be said for experience, too, as a portion of the night, no matter how bad it turned out, belonged to Norm Nixon.

The 33-year-old guard, who missed all of the last 2 seasons with unrelated knee and ankle operations, played his first regular-season game since April 1986. It wasn’t spectacular as comebacks go--8 points on 3-of-11 shooting and 11 assists in 29 minutes, with actress-wife Debbie Allen on hand for the occasion--but there were positives.

For one thing, he played. For another, his team got demolished. Yes, even things like that brighten the day.

“Now, it’s like, ‘Welcome to the NBA, guys,’ ” Nixon said.

Especially after getting run over by the Welcome Wagon himself, Barkley.

“For me and a lot of the guys,” Nixon continued, “you go through the exhibition season and get a lot of unrealistic expectations. . . . A lot of the young players are not realistic (about) what the regular season can be.

“The game tonight was good. The game tonight was good because our mind-set will now be different the rest of the trip. Everyone realizes what we really have to do now.”

Clipper Notes

Would-be teammates say they are indifferent over the Clippers’ negotiations with No. 1 draft choice Danny Manning, but the same apparently cannot be said for the rest of the league. “He definitely has a bad image, because guys (on other teams) take that as offensive,” 76er star Charles Barkley told the Philadelphia Daily News. “It makes me mad because the guy hasn’t played a down.” Barkley, one of the game’s best players, is the highest-paid 76er, at $1,536,000 for this season and will get $1,613,000 next. Manning has turned down an offer of $10 million for 5 years, although 30% of the money would be deferred. “I don’t believe you should pay guys till they prove themselves,” Barkley said. “If they had offered $1 million, that wouldn’t have been fair (to Manning), but if he doesn’t take the $2 million, that’s a lot different. That’s more of an insult.”

Clipper guard Grant Gondrezick had a $25,000 bonus added to his $75,000 guaranteed contract for being on the opening-day roster. The Pepperdine graduate would not have signed with the Clippers as a free agent without the portion guaranteed, having left a team in France to try out for the NBA and having forfeited an opportunity to return in the process. . . . Three Clippers were put on the ballot for February’s All-Star game at Houston: rookie forwards Danny Manning and Charles Smith and second-year guard Reggie Williams. . . . Dave Popson, acquired by the Clippers on waivers Thursday, will wear uniform No. 35.

Scott Brooks, the 76ers’ 5-foot 11-inch backup point guard from UC Irvine, is living with Barkley until he gets settled in his own apartment. “He knows I’m nervous,” said Brooks, a 1987 Irvine graduate who played in the Continental Basketball Assn. last season. “He laughs at me all the time.”