Clippers Talk It Up, Win : Pro basketball: After a team meeting, they score their first victory at Boston Garden since 1979, 114-105.

Gary Grant, Charles Smith and Ron Harper, three of the more vocal Clippers, called a team meeting before Friday morning’s shoot-around. It was five minutes in length, but, it turned out, long on substance.

Issue No. 1: Close losses. It may sound good to have the last eight losses by an average of 5.25 points, but it does no good in the win column. Several of those losses should have been victories.

Issue No. 2: Missed easy baskets. A season-long Clipper plague, they may have lost some of those close games on missed layups and, worse, slam dunks. The team isn’t good enough to blow easy opportunities and win.

Both problems were solved later as the Clippers converted most of their makeable shots en route to one of the biggest wins in recent history, a 114-105 victory over the Boston Celtics, a team they hadn’t beaten at Boston Garden since March 2, 1979.

The biggest win?

The overwhelming opinion is, yes, even though Celtic forward Larry Bird was limited to 19 minutes of action after spraining his left ankle near the end of the first quarter.

Grant: “Oh, yeah. To win on the road against one of the most dominant teams in the league? No question.”

Danny Manning, who was cleared to increase his time from 30 to 35 minutes a game and responded with 26 points on 12-of-17 shooting: “It’s a very big win. Whenever we win on the road it’s big. But when you can beat a team the caliber of Boston on the road, it’s even better.”

Benoit Benjamin, who is in his fifth season: “For wins on the road, yes.”

These team meetings, where coaches are invited but the players talk, seem to work out quite well. Grant, Smith and Harper have called three on game days, and each time the Clippers responded with major victories: Detroit Dec. 13 at the Sports Arena, Indiana Dec. 19 at the Sports Arena, and now this.

The Clippers had come close to beating Boston last month, of course. Bird’s two free throws with 0.2 seconds remaining after a controversial foul call on Smith decided a 112-111 Celtic victory at the Sports Arena, and the Clippers didn’t forget. Unspoken motivation.

“I don’t think you had to talk about it,” Coach Don Casey said. “We just played the tape.”

That’s what makes this victory all the more rewarding. For years this mausoleum of basketball tradition has been a burial ground for the Clippers, most recently a 35-point loss last January.

The victory came after the Clippers (12-17) went ahead by 14 points in the first quarter and lost the lead, fell behind by 10 points in the third and came back and used a 10-0 run to tie the score, 90-90, on Smith’s three-point play with 8:44 remaining. The Clippers, who shot 59% in the final 12 minutes compared to the Celtics’ 26%, then built a 103-99 lead that Boston never overcame.

“You’ve got to give the Clippers credit,” Boston center Robert Parish said. “They played well. They played with a lot of intensity. We played well, but we did it in spurts. We didn’t meet their intensity for 48 minutes.”

The Celtics made a lot of noise, however. With Bird playing only four minutes in the second half, they were still within 105-99 with 2:35 to play. It went to 109-103 on a basket by Boston’s Charles Smith with 23.4 seconds to play, then the Clippers’ Charles Smith was fouled.

The Clippers went into a rage when officials tried to move the time remaining back to 25 seconds, but Celtic Coach Jimmy Rodgers made their anger seem mild when referees decided only 20.4 seconds remained.

Smith made the first free throw for the Clippers as Rodgers argued. After Rodgers was assessed a technical foul, he went nose to nose with referee Joe Forte. That resulted in technical No. 2 and an ejection, prompting Rodgers to follow Forte onto the court all the way to the free-throw line, yelling in his face the entire way.

Harper made both free throws on the technical fouls, and then Smith completed his second shot at the line from the original foul. He scored points No. 110 and 113 for the Clippers without the clock moving.

The Clippers had much to celebrate. They held Boston to 17 points in the fourth quarter; Benjamin blocked six shots; Manning’s offensive output; Smith had 19 points and 11 rebounds.

“We’ve played good basketball the last month, month and a half,” Benjamin said. “We’re beginning to break the ice. Now we’ve just got to keep it up.”

Clipper Notes

Clipper rookie Jeff Martin had five points and two rebounds in 14 minutes, but made a major contribution with his defense on Reggie Lewis. . . . Of Benoit Benjamin’s season-high six blocked shots, four were at the expense of Kevin McHale. . . . Clipper Charles Smith re-strained the muscle that runs down the back of his neck. It is more bothersome than serious, and he will continue to receive rubdowns, as he did Friday morning. . . . Boston saw its four-game winning streak end in the midst of what should be an easy stretch of games. The Celtics’ recent victories came against the Clippers at the Sports Arena, the Sacramento Kings, the Seattle SuperSonics and the Washington Bullets.