These Clippers Have Been Many Years in the Unmaking

With all due disrespect to the Miami Heat, it’s time we recognized the L.A. Clippers as the worst team in professional basketball.

The Heat features a worse record, but that organization sprang into existence just months ago, whereas the Clippers have been around a long time. This is a team that has been decades in the unmaking.

It’s just as well that the Clippers aren’t struggling their way up into the middle of the NBA pack, because this is Hollywood, baby, a town that will not tolerate mediocrity.

Any attacks on the Clippers at this time are unfair, because they recently lost their best player and fired one of their best coaches, but who said life was fair?

I watched the Clippers crumble on TV Monday night, losing to the Atlanta Hawks. The Clippers were out-scored in the second half by 27 points, on their home court.

At the top of the telecast, play-by-play man Ralph Lawler noted that the Clippers “come into this game with a 14-game winning streak, make that losing streak.”

Hey, a guy can dream. And make that 15 now, Ralph.

In the end, the Clippers’ offense fell apart like a bad alibi. Lawler noted that the new coach, Don Casey, explained that he had the Clippers working so hard on defense in practice the previous week that the offense may have suffered.

The Clippers are like the college football player who showed his coach his latest report card: 4 F’s and 1 D.

“Son, looks like you’ve been spending too much time on one subject,” the coach said.

Not that you can blame Casey. He’s a defense-oriented coach, and had he not drilled the Clippers on defense, the Hawks might have gone for 200 points Monday night.

Casey took over a week ago, after Gene Shue had been fired a week earlier. The Clippers discovered they didn’t like Shue’s style, although apparently he is the same Gene Shue who coached the Clippers from ’78 to ’80.

Shue has a bright future. For one thing, it’s unlikely he’ll be hired again to coach the Clippers. For another thing, the previous two coaches fired by the Clippers, Jim Lynam and Don Chaney, have gone on to great success.

Lynam currently is coaching the Philadelphia 76ers, a strong second-place team in the Atlantic Division, and Chaney’s Houston Rockets are in second in the Midwest Division. Being fired by the Clippers, it would seem, builds character, and maybe IQ.

You have to like Casey’s style, though. One of his first moves was to appoint Benoit Benjamin co-captain of the team, joining captain Quintin Dailey.

On the surface, this is like naming Morton Downey Jr. headmaster of your charm school.

Shue had long since given up on Benjamin, and with no small justification. Shue benched Big Ben more than once, and often begged team ownership to trade, sell or waive Benoit.

Casey tried a different approach. Give the big guy some responsibility, a position of leadership. Challenge him to grow up and live up to his physical potential.

It’s a long shot, but when you’re in Casey’s shoes there aren’t many short ones. He has to work fast, turn the team around in a couple of months, or be gone.

“I think what that team really needs is stability,” Chaney told me last week. “They’re a very young team. You’re not going to win this year because they’re too young. What they (management) need to do is show patience and tolerance. You can’t make (coaching) changes every year or 2. You have to let the players grow with the coach.”

Chaney hints that some of the team problems might come from a level or two above the coach. Not a bad theory, considering that the Clippers were terrible when Benoit Benjamin was in grammar school.

“When I was there, there was a panel, basically (making all decisions),” Chaney said. “There were four people, plus me. Unwieldy? Definitely. You can’t have five people making decisions.”

Ideally your head coach and your general manager, Elgin Baylor, would make player decisions.

“(Owner Donald) Sterling and (president Alan) Rothenberg should stay out of it,” Chaney said.

Why? Maybe because this is the team that traded away Byron Scott, Terry Cummings, Michael Cage and James Donaldson, with a poor overall return. Cage is currently eighth in the league in rebounding, Donaldson is 13th, Cummings is averaging 24 points and Scott has done well with some other NBA team.

The Clippers’ organization--excuse the oxymoron--is the one that wasted several years, players and dollars on Badfoot Bill Walton. Sterling is the guy who turned down a coin-flip deal with Jerry Buss, a flip that might have given the Clippers a rookie named James Worthy. Instead the Clippers got nobody.

This is the team that apparently is at least considering an offer to trade Ken Norman, a nice-looking second-year forward, for Mark Aguirre, a 29-year-old almost-superstar who has made a colorful career out of feuding with coaches.

What the Clippers need to do is what Chaney suggests: Keep the players they have--with one possible exception--find a coach the players can grow with, and let the new coach and Baylor make the moves.

For a new coach, how about Paul Westhead, currently at Loyola Marymount? You want a running coach? He’ll run your ears off.

Good with kids? What do you think he’s coaching now? And he learned a lot through his mistakes when coaching the Lakers and Chicago Bulls.

“It’s a hard call whether I’d have any interest in that (Clipper) job,” Westhead said last week. “Right now, I’m totally captivated by what I do. I’m really happy with this situation.”

You hate to see a guy that happy. Make him an offer, Clippers.

Or, make Benoit Benjamin your player-coach. You have no place to go but up.