Meet the Clippers, New Road Warriors : NBA: Successful trip brings respect, hope for .500 record and talk of playing in the postseason.

Not that the Clippers had a strange journey, but they faced Brad Lohaus at Minnesota and then at Milwaukee after he was traded, played against both Paxson brothers, and got unseasonably warm 30-degree weather throughout the Midwest and East Coast. But that’s nothing compared to what they saw in the mirror.

Would you believe a .500 team? The Clippers returned to Los Angeles Sunday with a 15-19 record after an eight-game, 14-day trip that was supposed to bury them, as always, but instead provided one of their greatest runs.

To a team that has never been at .500 more than 12 games into a season since moving from San Diego before the 1984-85 season, this qualifies as a major accomplishment.

The 5-3 trip also included solid efforts in losses to Detroit (by four points) and New York (by one in overtime), and look who’s coming up: Charlotte Tuesday, Seattle Thursday and Minnesota Saturday at the Sports Arena. Then they travel to Sacramento, San Antonio and Houston. Only the Spurs and SuperSonics have winning records, and the latter are without leading scorer Dale Ellis, injured last week in a car crash.

As one Boston writer summed up after the Clippers’ first road victory against the Celtics since 1979: They used to be the Clippers. Now they’re a basketball team.

A backhanded compliment, to be sure, but the Clippers aren’t complaining. Positive league-wide recognition, which other than victories at Boston Garden for the first time since the 1970s, at Milwaukee since 1980 and at Atlanta since 1981, is the true gain. That might be an intangible, but the players sure feel it.

“More than anything else, it was about respect around the league,” guard Gary Grant said. “Winning those games against big teams in big cities--not just expansion teams--who are at the head of their class.”

In a single trip, the Clippers won two fewer road games than they won during the previous two seasons combined. They won at places past teams had practically gone 0-for-the-’80s. They won three consecutive road games for the first time since 1985-86. If Ron Harper’s shot had gone in in the final second at New York, they would have won four in a row and been 6-2 for the trip.

There were individual achievements, too. Danny Manning reclaimed his shooting touch. Jeff Martin, who played a total of 12 minutes in the previous 12 games, got 14 at Boston and impressed coaches to the point that he became one of the top reserves. Charles Smith concentrated on rebounding to make up for the absence of injured Ken Norman and improved his already sizable reputation as one of the league’s top young players.

From 0-10 on the road to this?

“We’re definitely a different team coming home,” Smith said. “We have much more confidence. Even when we’re down five or seven points, we feel while we’re running up and down the court that we’re not out if it. We know we can come back and win it now. . . . The trip was all about that.”

The players insist they knew it could be turned around this quickly, but you would have had trouble getting anyone else in the organization to mention the playoffs, let alone acknowledge that there is a chance for the first postseason play in Clipper history.

Coach Don Casey, asked the other day about a run for the playoffs, said: “I wouldn’t argue with that.”

He must have been on the trip.

BETTER ON THE ROAD A look at some Clipper statistics before and during recent eight-game trip.

Statistic Before Trip Manning shooting 47.4% 57.4% Smith rebounding 6.2 9.9 Benjamin blocks 2.26 3.86 Martin minutes 6.9 14.4 Points allowed 104.5 99.5 Record 10-16 5-3