Road Stays a Fast Lane for Clippers : Pro basketball: They beat the Bucks, 95-94, for their fifth victory in seven away games.

No one on the Clippers’ dream-come-true tour has blinked to wake themselves, and Friday night, when the setting was right, no one flinched, either.

Down to the last seconds in a one-point game, the Clippers hung on to beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 95-94, before 17,901 at the Bradley Center when Paul Pressey’s shot for the Bucks rimmed out at the buzzer.

The Clippers, who have won three consecutive road games for the first time since March 28-April 1, 1986, are 5-2 on the trip. The final game will be played tonight at Chicago with the Clippers at 15-18, 2 1/2 months ahead of last season’s 21-victory pace.

About the time exhaustion is supposed to set in, the Clippers have opted instead for success. Numbness, maybe that’s what all this winning brings.

Ron Harper played 46 of a possible 48 minutes, including the entire second half. This after going 43, 39, 44 and 43 the last four games.

“Wins help me prepare for these games,” he said. “Believe me, if we were losing, I’d probably be real tired.”

Said Coach Don Casey: “These guys won’t let themselves be tired.”

Charles Smith suffered reinjury of the right big toe that caused him to miss the Dec. 12 game at Portland. He played 36 minutes, the pain neutralized by the possibility of another victory.

“No question,” Smith said. “This makes it seem like all in a day’s work. Injuries hurt more when you’re losing.”

The Clippers, winners of six of their last nine since the most recent Sports Arena home stand, are feeling no pain. But they came so close to agony.

The Bucks (19-15), who lost to the Clippers in Milwaukee for the first time since Jan. 9, 1980, went on an 8-4 run that cut the Clipper lead to 93-92. When Harper made two free throws with 1:10 left, it was 95-92, and Pressey’s shot from the right baseline made it a one-point margin again.

The Pressey basket came with 25.1 seconds to play, meaning the Clippers could nearly run out the clock without even taking a shot. But they used less than six seconds.

Harper walked the ball up court, backing across mid-court to protect the ball from Pressey. Harper hit the gas once too often and bumped into the Buck reserve, who seemed to have a role in every crucial play, and was called for an offensive foul at the 10-second line with 19 seconds to play.

“I thought that was going to cost us the ballgame,” said Harper, who had 23 points, 10 assists and seven rebounds.

The Clippers have lost close games with far less time before, so this seemed like forever. Milwaukee had two timeouts left but didn’t use either. Ideally, the Bucks would have gotten the ball to Jack Sikma, a center who made only three of 14 attempts but shoots well outside for a big man, or Ricky Pierce, who was having a 25-point night.

“As opposed to calling a timeout and letting them (the Clippers) set up a defense, we called for one of our bread-and-butter players and ran it,” Milwaukee Coach Del Harris said.

“But we didn’t get anybody open. At that point, we still had about eight seconds left, and that would have been a good time for us to take the timeout. But I wasn’t able to get a timeout called, and we had to take the shot we could get off.”

To be certain, it wasn’t what the Bucks were looking for--an off-balance one-hander by Pressey at the free-throw line. It hit the rim and bounced away.

“I thought they would score and we would come back and score,” Casey said. “These guys are making me believers now.”

Casey may be in the minority among the Clippers in that regard. The players insist, as they have for days now as one impressive victory is followed by another, that they knew it could be like this. Kids say the darndest things.

“This is what we assumed,” said Danny Manning, who returned to the site of his Jan. 4, 1989, knee injury and answered with 10 points in 35 minutes. “This is what we planned would happen.”

But what is it about Manning and Milwaukee? First the knee injury and then food poisoning. An order of take-out beef took care of him Thursday night, but he claimed to be close to full speed Friday night.

“It was another tremendous win for us,” Casey said. “Partly because of the way they (the Bucks) had been playing and that we were on their court. It’s just getting good day by day.”

Getting better is more like it.

Clipper Notes

Milwaukee saw a four-game winning streak end. The Bucks had also won 24 in a row at home against Western Conference teams, a streak dating to Jan. 8, 1988. . . . Milwaukee Coach Del Harris: “There’s no doubt they’re a different team now with (Ron) Harper instead of Reggie Williams. Williams wasn’t playing for them and he’s not playing for Cleveland. So what they’ve done is transfer 20 points from one city to another.”