Where There’s No Fire, Don’t Expect Spark

By now, the L.A. Clippers are pretty sure that Benoit Benjamin lacks a killer instinct.

By now, they’re not sure Ben even has a jaywalker instinct.

The world’s longest and strangest basketball tryout is droning into its fourth season, with the Clippers still trying to decide whether the kid can cut it in the National Basketball Assn.

Benoit Benjamin is 24 years old, he is 7-feet tall and 250 pounds, and he has talent that would put him among the NBA’s top 5 or 6 centers. If only he had the fire.

Fire? Some nights, trying to win games with Ben’s fire in the pivot is like trying to barbecue a heifer with a kitchen match.

Big Ben is currently the team’s backup center, playing behind Greg Kite, which is not where you want your lottery-pick, franchise-making young center to be. You want him sweeping the glass, not dusting the pine.

I asked Coach Gene Shue about Ben and his, uh, status.

“That’s old news, isn’t it?” Shue said, evenly.

That’s the point, of course. Four years into his glorious career, Ben is still the Big Puzzle. His failure to find anything resembling a consistent groove is old news that won’t go away.

The Clippers are desperate for new news. Ben played well for the first 8 games of the season, his best start ever, averaging 18.1 points, 10 rebounds, 62% shooting.

But the season is 82 games, and more if you make the playoffs. Ben’s attention span doesn’t seem to be that long. The next 8 games, he averaged 12.7 points, 6.4 rebounds and 42%.

Shue took him out of the starting lineup.

Shue, a diplomat who does not criticize his players publicly, says he moved Benjamin and Norm Nixon out of the starting lineup in order to balance the club, which was playing very poorly on the road. Shue wanted to have good players coming off the bench.

That’s sounds OK, it almost makes sense, but you wonder why Wilt Chamberlain’s coach or Michael Jordan’s coach never thought of balancing their teams by bringing those guys off the bench.

Shue points out that Benoit wasn’t the only player whose performance dipped, and that you can’t bench all 12 of your guys at once.

What Shue won’t say is how frustrated he is at Benoit’s failure to play hard every game.

On a bad team--the Clippers of the past 3 seasons, for instance--Ben would be just another headache. But this season the Clippers have talent. Danny Manning and Charles Smith (out with a bruised hip and sprained wrist) soon will be NBA stars. Several other guys, including comeback kids Norm Nixon and Quintin Dailey, can play.

“I think this is the first year I’ve ever had a legitimate supporting cast to complement my talents,” Benjamin said Monday morning, sitting courtside before a Clipper workout at the Sports Arena.

So what happened?

“I haven’t been playing like I was at the beginning of the year,” Benjamin admitted, speaking softly into his sneakers. “If I get the minutes, I can produce. That’s what I think it all boils down to, is playing time.”

How does he feel about not starting?

“It’s something I gotta live with,” he said. “Everyone knows who the best player is, there’s nothing I can do about it. . . . I took a different approach. I’ve never been a bench player, maybe it’s something I can learn. I’m not gonna let it upset me.”

Is it the coach’s fault? Well, Ben is working on his second Clipper coach.

Bill Russell, basketball’s greatest winner, the very embodiment of competitive fire, once spent several days working with Benoit.

The Clippers approved of the tutoring. Attitude, reasoned the Clippers, can be contagious. And sure enough, the sessions did seem to have an effect. Russell was seen more frequently on the golf course.

People tend to like Ben. He’s a good-natured fellow. He is kind to his three Rottweilers--Ebony, Poison and Kool Aid. It may well be that fate, in the form of Ben’s large and well-coordinated body, has thrust him into an occupation for which he is not temperamentally suited.

He likes the NBA life, and the money is good. It’s just that sometimes the action on the floor doesn’t capture Ben’s interest, even when he’s in it.

That doesn’t make him a bad guy.

It does make him a bad player.

“It’s Ben’s last year of his contract,” Shue says, noncommittally, “it’s up to Ben to do well. . . . I have no complaints with Ben. It’s up to Ben to perform, and performing means you’re helping the team win.”

It’s becoming clear that he doesn’t do that as often as he should.

It’s time to end the tryout. Why wait until Benjamin’s contract runs out? The season isn’t lost yet. The Clippers need to trade Ben and get a decent center, someone such as Mychal Thompson or Mike Gminski, although Ben’s trade value might not be that high.

The Clippers have tried changing coaches. They’ve tried patience, waiting for young Ben to mature. They’ve tried niceness; nobody in the organization speaks ill of Ben.

They’ve tried surrounding him with the best supporting cast of his career, and now they’ve tried using him off the bench.

“I’ll be back in the starting lineup,” Ben said, quietly. “I don’t see myself sitting on the bench too much longer. I don’t see myself as a bench player.”