Vandeweghe Finds Spot to Shoot Down Clippers

Kiki Vandeweghe, one of the main characters in the Portland Trail Blazers’ season-long family feud, found his spot Wednesday night on the Sports Arena floor.

“I just made a couple of jumpers, that’s all,” he said.

Three straight from the same spot, to be exact. Three jumpers from the right baseline, a few steps in from the corner, in the final 2 minutes to bury the Clippers and their bid to end a losing streak--now at 16--and give the Trail Blazers a 108-107 victory before a crowd of 9,991.

Vandeweghe, who has continually asked to be traded because of his reduced role this season, scored 24 of his game-high 28 points in the second half. He also finished with 6 assists.

The last of his jumpers came with 47 seconds left to put Portland ahead, 108-105. The Clippers closed to within a point on Joe Wolf’s basket with 37 seconds left and then had a chance to win when Wolf grabbed Terry Porter’s errant pass.

The Clippers called time out with 9 seconds remaining and designed a play that was supposed to go to Charles Smith, who scored 22 points. But Tom Garrick, a shooting guard starting at the point in Gary Grant’s absence, was covered closely by Clyde Drexler as he neared the right side of the lane. Garrick couldn’t get the ball to Smith.

Garrick, who had 14 points, 10 assists and only 2 turnovers, went down the middle and took a 7-foot shot that hit the front of the rim. Wolf got a finger on the ball for a last-second tip, but that didn’t go down, either.

“I felt comfortable with it,” Garrick said. “I was in the middle of the lane. Some people would look at it as off-balance, but I like those shots, so I took it.”

Said Don Casey, after the Clippers fell to 10-33, 0-5 in his tenure as interim coach: “Driving the middle against a team like this is a disaster because they close in so fast.”

With their roster already reduced to 10 players because Grant was in Ohio with his sick mother and Grant Gondrezick was suspended indefinitely while in a substance abuse center, the Clippers lost their second-leading scorer with 59 seconds to play in the second quarter.

Ken Norman, who scored 22 points in Monday’s loss against the Atlanta Hawks, was ejected with Portland’s Jerome Kersey when they got into a fight.

With play going on, they squared off under the basket, standing nearly nose-to-nose for a few seconds before Kersey pushed Norman in the chest. Norman countered by landing a hard right, and the 6-foot 7-inch Kersey retaliated with a right that sent the 6-8 Norman to the floor.

Norman got up quickly, just in time to see the referees directing him to the locker room.

The Clippers were leading, 57-48, at the time and held a 59-50 halftime advantage.

They increased the lead to 65-52 with 10:48 to play in the third quarter, but then suddenly began looking like the team that got trampled in the second half against the Hawks.

The Trail Blazers, winners of 16 straight against the Clippers, tied the score, 84-84, at the end of the third quarter with a 14-4 run.

Clipper Notes

With 233 assists this season going into Wednesday night’s game, Norm Nixon has moved past John Havlicek and Jerry West and into seventh place on the National Basketball Assn. all-time list. Nixon, in his 10th season, has 6,280 career assists, putting him 196 behind Nate Archibald for sixth place. Oscar Robertson is No. 1 with 9,887. “I haven’t been aware of anything like that this season,” Nixon said. “This isn’t one of those years to be into stats.”

The Clippers and Dallas Mavericks have discussed a trade that would send Mark Aguirre to Los Angeles, Ken Norman being mentioned most as the player who would go in exchange, although it doesn’t appear to be any closer to completion than the Mavericks’ dealings with several other teams. “My impression is that they’re talking to a lot of people, including us,” Clipper president Alan Rothenberg said. “But nothing is imminent. I think they (the Mavericks) are conducting a bit of an auction, hearing what one team has to offer and then taking it to other teams to see if they can top it.” Said General Manager Elgin Baylor: “We’ve been talking to Dallas for the last 3 years about Mark Aguirre.” The most glamorous deal mentioned: Aguirre to Detroit for Adrian Dantley, with a few other players thrown in for good measure. A holdup to a deal with most teams would be Aguirre’s salary. The eighth-year player earns $715,700 this season, but he and Dallas owner Donald Carter have already “agreed to agree” to about double that figure sometime soon after March 4. League rules stipulate that a year must pass between contract adjustments.

Baylor said the team didn’t consider it a risk to sign Grant Gondrezick as a free agent before the season, despite a link to the Phoenix Suns’ well-publicized cocaine problems during the 1986-87 season. “After talking to him and talking to his agent, we felt pretty safe with the player,” Baylor said.