Clippers’ Setback No Real Longshot : Pro basketball: Seattle’s Johnson scores 18 points in fourth quarter and hits a 35-footer with 1.1 seconds left for 107-104 win.

On Dec. 7, Phoenix traded Eddie Johnson and two first-round draft picks to Seattle for Xavier McDaniel. Observers said it was a move that would also help the Clippers, seeing as the SuperSonics, who supposedly would get the biggest payday from the deal in the years ahead, were more competition for a playoff spot this season than the Suns.

Today, the Clippers don’t feel as if they got much of an assist. That alleged helping hand swept them across the back of the head Wednesday night, knocking them that much closer to elimination from postseason play.

Johnson scored 18 of his game-high 27 points in the fourth quarter, including a 35-foot jumper with 1.1 seconds left, to give the SuperSonics a 107-104 victory before 12,021 at Seattle Coliseum. The defeat left the Clippers eight games back from the final playoff spot heading into the All-Star break.

Johnson had torched the Clippers with amazing regularity during his days with the Suns, except then it was only big scoring binges, so much so that people used to joke that he would skip the game before to ice down his elbow in preparation. Now, it’s points and a demoralizing game-winning shot.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” said Johnson, who is averaging 22.2 points his past nine games, all off the bench. “But I think that’s good to know. When I’m 40 years old and no other team wants me, I can go to the Clippers because they’ll remember me.”

By now, they couldn’t forget him if they wanted to. Johnson is to the point where he’s even calling his shots, jokingly or otherwise. It helps to deliver punch lines like this, of course.

The Clippers led, 103-100, after Tom Garrick made two free throws with 56 seconds remaining, when Johnson, standing in front of the visiting bench, told Ken Norman, his good friend and fellow Illinois alumnus, the SuperSonics would come back to win.

The Clipper forward laughed.

Johnson held up three fingers.

So when Seattle called timeout after Garrick tied the score, 104-104, with a free throw with 4.7 seconds to play and Johnson got the ball near the midcourt stripe, it was only fitting Norman was guarding him. Johnson backed him in a few steps, got a little breathing room and turned and fired the straight-away three-pointer. Swish.

It was a fitting ending to a game in which neither team led by more than eight points after the first quarter. The excitement, however, is probably not much of a consolation to the Clippers, who shot 57.7%, their second-best mark of the season, and still dropped to 15-32.

But they had their chances. Coach Mike Schuler refused to second-guess his decision to have Garrick, playing in crunch time in his first game off the injured list, in the lineup while the starting point guard, Gary Grant, sat on the bench late, even after Garrick threw away a ball with the Clippers clinging to a 103-102 lead. Johnson converted that turnover into a baseline jumper and a one-point Seattle cushion.

“I was thinking Tommy at the free-throw line might be a little better (than Grant),” Schuler said after the Clippers lost their 12th in a row here and fell to 4-22 on the road this season. “Tommy had also done a pretty good job defensively, I thought.

“The shot that Eddie made, I can’t do anything about. Play upon play stand out for the mistakes we made. Plays we don’t make, plays we don’t finish.”

Leaving it up to Johnson to finish them for good.

Clipper Notes

Tom Garrick was activated Wednesday, the earliest he could have returned after sitting out the mandatory five games on the injured list, to bring the Clipper roster back to full strength at 12 players. Garrick, who has been bothered by inflammation of his right knee for the last month, had to stay off the leg to help the healing process and didn’t begin running at full speed until Sunday, so stamina might be the toughest part of his return. Garrick takes the roster spot of Winston Garland, who went on the injured list Monday with a broken left hand.

Garrick’s timing continues to be impeccable. The soreness in his knee worsened when a roster spot was needed for Ron Harper’s activation, although the third-year guard went on the injured list despite not having missed a game. Even more recently, opponents were showing an interest in trading for Garrick, but, with the injury to Garland, he has become valuable to the Clippers again as backup point guard.

BIRD RETURNS: The Celtic forward, sidelined for a month with a back injury, contributes 18 points, 13 assists and nine rebounds in a 133-117 victory over Charlotte. C8