Victory Has High Price for Clippers : Pro basketball: Ron Harper scores 33 points, then goes down with a knee injury in fourth quarter of 106-98 win over Charlotte Hornets.

The Clippers may have felt like carrying Ron Harper around on their shoulders before, but this surely wasn’t a sight they ever wanted: Harper being driven from the Sports Arena locker room to the parking lot on a golf cart, his right leg extended.

Such is the lasting memory of a night when he scored a game-high 33 points to lead the Clippers past the Charlotte Hornets, 106-98, at the Sports Arena. Whether it was precaution or a harbinger of bad news will be known today, when Harper undergoes a magnetic resonance imaging exam--an advanced X-ray--on his knee.

“Right now it’s a sprain,” said Dr. Tony Daly, the team physician, “but we’ll know more tomorrow (today). There doesn’t seem to be any ligament damage or serious injury. But he did feel a pop when he went down.”

That pop is what worries the Clippers most and why Harper, their leading scorer, didn’t return after his leg buckled upon landing while catching a Gary Grant pass under the basket with 7:04 to play. He otherwise seemed fit, but the sound provided something of a red flag, although Daly cautions that the injury may, actually, be nothing worse than a sprain.

“It felt tight to him, and the way the injury happened we’d rather let him sit out and decide more tomorrow,” Daly said.

Harper didn’t come out of the training room to say exactly what happened. But his play spoke volumes in his fifth 30-plus point game as a Clipper.

Returning from a much-ballyhooed 5-3 trip, which included a 10-point victory at Charlotte, the Clippers struggled to win.

A loss to the Hornets, the only winless road team in the league, would seem to have been devastating to their sudden credibility. But not to Coach Don Casey, who afterward emphatically tried to put things in perspective after his team improved to 16-19.

“The effort wasn’t disappointing,” he said. “Let’s get one thing straight--these kids are not going to be superstars every night. Give them (the Hornets) credit. They stopped our good break and made some good plays. Our effort was strong. It’s just our execution wasn’t.”

Added Grant, who had 18 assists and 11 points: “Everyone knew they would be hard to play. We knew we wouldn’t blow them out. This was almost like a road game because we hadn’t played here in so long.”

Since Dec. 30, to be exact. The crowd of 10,120 welcomed the Clippers back to the Sports Arena with a partial standing ovation during introduction of the starting lineup, which, as expected, had Danny Manning at forward ahead of Ken Norman. Part of that was because Manning shot 57.4% on the just-completed trip; the rest because Norman had not played since Jan. 2 because of a strained groin.

“Obviously, I’d like to go back into the starting lineup, but I can’t put a whole lot of emphasis on that,” Norman said before the game. “The bottom line is winning. I’ve never played off the bench before, but neither has Danny. I’ll just have to go out and play as good or better than before.”

Norman, who began the night averaging 16 points a game, third-best on the team, showed no signs of the injury that limited his mobility for three consecutive outings before coaches decided to send him home from the trip. In 13 first-half minutes, he had five points and four rebounds.

That helped the Clippers take a 54-48 halftime lead. They shot 51.2% and led by as many as many as 12 points, 54-42, on Norman’s layup with 2:05 left in the second quarter, before the Hornets cut the deficit to six at intermission.

Harper had 21 points by then and Benoit Benjamin had 11 of his season-high 20 rebounds. The Clipper advantage would have been more if not for the 18 points by Charlotte’s Kelly Tripucka, who capitalized on a soft defense outside to hit six of 11 shots in the first quarter.

When Tripucka connected on a jump shot from the left side 3:14 into the second half for two of his 30 points, the Clipper lead was trimmed to 57-56, prompting Casey to call time out. Soon after, when Stuart Gray took an inside feed from Tripucka, was fouled and made one free throw, it was 58-58.

The Clippers went on a 14-5 third-quarter run for a 72-63 lead--and blew it. And then some. Charlotte used a 13-2 surge moments later to take a 76-74 edge heading into the fourth quarter.

The Clippers led, 89-84, when Harper went down. They almost followed, the Hornets moving ahead, 94-93, with 4:22 left.

The Clippers answered with a 9-0 run to finish off the Hornets after playing back to 96-96. Charles Smith’s 14-footer gave the Clippers a 98-96 lead with 3:33 to play. He had five of the nine points and Norman four in the run.

The next important answer comes today.

Clipper Notes

X-rays Monday on the left knee of Tom Garrick proved negative, but the Clipper guard reported pain Tuesday and did not dress. He tested the bruise while shooting around about an hour before the game, but Garrick said he felt some soreness, so coaches held him out . . .

Ron Harper was named NBA player of the week. He averaged 23.8 points, 6.3 assists and 5.3 rebounds in four games.