Another Clipper Breakdown : Pro Basketball: Gary Grant fractures ankle and could miss two months. To add insult to injury, the Heat wins, 126-91.

Charles Smith might as well have walked under a ladder with a black cat on Friday the 13th. He should know better than to tempt fate. He plays for the Clippers.

But days after Ron Harper joined the list of Clipper casualties, Smith looked at the new lineup and, noting it consisted of four big men and point guard Gary Grant, joked that Grant might as well go out, too, so it could be an all-front court operation.

Nobody’s joking anymore.

Friday night, second-year guard Grant, among the NBA leaders in assists and steals, fractured his left ankle in a scramble under the basket early in the Clippers’ eventual 126-91 loss to Miami at Miami Arena, the biggest margin of victory in the Heat’s 1 1/2-season history.

While the Clippers continue upstate to Orlando today for the third stop of a five-game trip, Grant will return to Los Angeles to be examined again by team physician Dr. Tony Daly, who will determine if surgery is needed to place pins into the joint to help it heal. If no operation is needed, trainer Bernie LaReau estimated, Grant could be in a cast four to six weeks and then need another couple weeks of rehabilitation and conditioning before being activated again.

“The fibula is not a weight-bearing bone in the leg, so it could be quicker, depending on the severity of the break,” LaReau said.

Unlike similar knee injuries to Danny Manning last season and Harper 17 days earlier, when both players walked off the court and received upbeat postgame diagnoses, this one looked bad from the start. Almost the instant Miami’s Grant Long rolled on his side along the baseline and up the back of Grant’s leg to grab a loose ball, the seriousness was evident.

Grant, on his stomach, pounded the ground a few times with his fist. His body twisted, writhing in pain. Not long after LaReau arrived at Grant’s side, to be joined by his Miami counterpart Ron Culp and Heat team physician Dr. Harlan Selesnick, a stretcher arrived, too.

Not long after that, Clipper Coach Don Casey muttered to no one in particular in front of the bench, “Can anything else go wrong?”

Turning a game in which the Clippers shot 35.4% and allowed Miami its most points ever in a regulation game into the secondary event of the night was about the only good thing. Beyond that, good news was harder to find than an upbeat Clipper.

Smith, sitting at his locker, head down, waved off all questions. Ken Norman, who moved from forward to guard when Harper tore cartilage and a ligament in his right knee Jan. 16, was talking, but he made it clear he didn’t want to dissect the meaning of the latest blow to a promising, yet injury-riddled, franchise just now.

“I just don’t,” he said. “It’s too depressing to think about or talk about.”

Grant, who began the game fifth in the league in assists and sixth in steals and was three days removed from his first career triple-double, knew talking wouldn’t make a difference now. He didn’t want to discuss Harper’s injury when that first happened for fear of being jinxed.

“I knew as soon as it happened,” Grant said. “I saw it coming. I saw someone was ready to fall on me and I tried to move out of the way. Just as I moved it, he (Long) fell on it.

“I felt it turn all the way. The shocking part was that it wasn’t hurting right away. But I know it twisted around.

“When I got to the training room, then it started swelling up. Then it started hurting. I felt it growing and growing, so that meant it was swelling. It was throbbing.”

The Clippers saw another piece of their season disintegrate with 4:16 to play in the first half. They were already trailing, 22-15, against a team that came in with only nine victories, when Manning’s tip of a Norman shot went astray and fell to the ground. Manning and Long went for the ball, Grant was turned around.

Long said he wrestled it from Manning on the ground and turned to spin away from the pile. In the process, he rolled up the back of Grant’s leg, causing the big bone on the side of the ankle to snap under his weight. Long didn’t hear a snap, not that he needed to.

“But I knew he was in pain,” said the Heat forward, who had 16 points and 12 rebounds. “I could see it in his eyes.”

Manning wasn’t sure of the exact sequence, or even if he rolled on Grant. He wasn’t much concerned with the details, though.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know,” he said. “It doesn’t make any difference, does it? It’s still broke.”

Grant was X-rayed and placed in a cast at the arena. He even returned to the bench late in the third quarter. It took him a minute of watching the game--seeing, but not really--to realize his teammates were down by 17. Mostly, he stared straight ahead.

“I was just thinking,” he said. “It didn’t hit me yet that I’m going to miss a lot of games.”

The Clippers, who lost for the sixth time in seven games and dropped to 19-25 overall, eventually fell behind by 38, 126-88, on Billy Thompson’s slam dunk with 10.7 seconds left. Michael Young connected on a three-point jumper with 3.5 seconds to play to account for the final score.

See, coach, something else could go wrong.

“That injury decimated our backcourt, as far as the experience we had and the cohesiveness we had,” Casey said. “Gary is a very important part of this push offense, which died tonight.”

Before another part of the Clipper season was laid to rest, before Grant knew anything about getting home six days before his teammates, he met up with Miami rookie Glen Rice on the court. They had played together at the University of Michigan and took advantage of the time during pregame warmups to discuss the past and the present.

“We talked about Michigan,” Rice said. “Also, right before the game, we talked about all the injuries they’d been having.”

Clipper Notes

In their last two trips here, the Clippers have lost by 20 and 35 points. They’re also 1-4 overall against the second-year franchise. . . . Charles Smith had 21 points and nine rebounds, both Clipper highs. Miami had three players reach double figures in rebounds, led by Rony Seikaly, who had 13. Seikaly also had 24 points, second on the team to the 29 by Kevin Edwards. . . . The Heat broke a six-game losing streak.