No Surprises for Clippers: Brown Named, Lakers Win : Pro basketball: Threatt makes the difference in 100-95 victory at Forum. At halftime, Baylor announces coaching hire.

It hasn’t always taken much to beat the Clippers at the Forum or hold them to less than 100 points anywhere. Wednesday night, when it mattered most, it took Sedale Threatt.

Threatt had 14 points, 11 assists and seven rebounds, but his biggest plays came on the last two Clipper possessions by helping create one turnover and stopping a Clipper try for a tie to preserve the Lakers’ 100-95 victory before 17,049.

It came on the night the Clippers officially named Larry Brown as coach. Both happened according to plan--Brown signing his contract and Threatt creating havoc.

The Lakers led, 97-95, when Threatt first got defensive. He swarmed Gary Grant on the perimeter as Grant tried to lob the ball inside to Danny Manning, being guarded by Elden Campbell. Manning had 28 points and the hot hand with 12 points in the final quarter, but he never even got hold of the ball this time, Threatt helping force Grant into a pass that Campbell intercepted.

“I told Mike (Dunleavy) I’d get up on Grant so we could deny the ball because Manning was killing us down low,” said Threatt, who also had three steals. “It worked out perfectly, and Elden was able to come up with the steal.”

Dunleavy liked what he saw. “Sedale has got great hands, quick hands,” he said. “We tried to put pressure on Grant, and Elden did a great job of handling Manning.”

Campbell was immediately fouled and made on free throw to give the Lakers a 98-95 edge. The Clippers called time out with 25 seconds left to set up for a tying shot.

Ron Harper came down the left side, Threatt picking him up a few feet behind the three-point stripe. And just as Harper seemed to jump, Threatt knocked the ball away, out of bounds, off Harper’s hand.

After being on the wrong end of a 13-2 run that gave the Lakers a seven-point lead with 5:37 left, that’s where the Clipper comeback ended.

“We came up a little short in the end,” said Mack Calvin, in his second and last game as Clipper interim coach. “Execution in the last 30 or 40 seconds really hurt us.”

It helped the Lakers, who broke a two-game losing streak and headed into the All-Star break with a 28-18 record.

The official word that Brown had been hired came during halftime from General Manager Elgin Baylor, who spoon-fed Channel 13 an interview, despite the Clippers having a news conference scheduled for today.

Baylor repeated his previous statements that Brown, the Clippers’ lone candidate to replace the fired Mike Schuler, was chosen largely because of his experience and ability to teach young players. Also as expected, Brown signed a contract to run the rest of this season and the next four.

On the court, there were shades of years’ past Milwaukee Bucks’ scrimmages in which assistant coach Mike Dunleavy used to handle the green squad and assistant coach Mack Calvin took the white squad for Del Harris’ team.

Instead, it was the Clippers looking for a second consecutive victory at the Forum for the first time since March 15 and Nov. 27, 1981.

They started out well, too, grabbing a 29-20 lead at the end of the first quarter. But in the second quarter, the Clippers, who lost their seventh in a row on the road, scored only five points during the opening 6:40 and 15 the entire period. At halftime, there was a 44-44 tie.

The Clippers were six for 21 from the floor for that quarter, 28.6%. The Lakers weren’t exactly overwhelming in taking advantage, going 48%, but Terry Teagle had 12 points, all but one of his final total, on six-for-eight shooting off the bench.

The Lakers led by as many as 10 points in the third quarter, 61-51, but the Clippers closed the gap to 71-66 heading into the fourth. Time was running out for the Clippers and, in a different sense, Calvin.

He ended his first NBA coaching stint at 1-1, a victory at the Sports Arena and a loss while pushing the Lakers to the limit at the Forum.

Then it was time to step aside.

“My lease is up,” he said afterward with a smile.

Laker-Clipper Notes

The Clippers played without backup center James Edwards, who bruised his right hip and knee in a third-quarter fall Tuesday against Dallas. . . . The Lakers, or at least one cynical staffer, took no pity on Sedale Threatt, recently robbed at gunpoint after making a postgame stop at a gas station near the Forum to call his wife. Threatt showed up before Wednesday’s game to find someone had installed a phone in his locker, though it didn’t work, and a label above that read SEDALE THREATT PRIVATE LINE. He took the jab in the good-natured way it was intended and laughed himself.

Mike Schuler finished 52-75 as Clipper coach, putting him one victory shy of tying Jim Lynam for fourth place on the all-time franchise list and third among those who were with the Clippers. Jack Ramsay, who spent his four seasons as coach of the Buffalo Braves, leads with 158 victories. But Schuler’s winning percentage of 40.9 is second behind behind Ramsay (48.2%) among all who coached at least 10 games.

Mack Calvin, on the days when he and Mike Dunleavy were coached scrimmages for the Milwaukee Bucks: “We were very competitive. You’d have thought it was the NBA finals the way we were trying to go at it.”