NBA PLAYOFFS : Remembering When : From the Front Office to the Broadcast Booth to Season Ticket-Holders, This Is New to Clippers

Ralph Lawler remembers comments.

“When we first moved up here, it was like, ‘Who are they?’ when you’d say you were with the Clippers,” the team’s longtime broadcaster said. “Then it got to the point that they knew who you were, but you almost wish they didn’t.”

Carl Lahr remembers looks.

“People in my apartment building in the past would look down in the elevator when I got in,” the Clippers’ vice president of marketing said. “Or just make fun of the team.”

Ken Norman remembers humiliation.

During a game at Detroit in March of 1988, a heckler known as Leon the Barber, notorious for riding visiting teams without mercy, picked up on Coach Gene Shue yelling at a referee with the Clippers trailing by 25 or 30 points. “Don’t throw him out! Don’t throw him out!” Leon shouted from nearby. “Make him stay out here and suffer with the rest of the team!”

Paula Hazzard remembers zings.

A season ticket-holder along with her husband, Steve, at the Sports Arena since Game 1, she got a Clipper T-shirt for Christmas from a friend three or four years ago. “Someone asked me what I did wrong,” she said. “They asked if that was the equivalent of getting coal in the stocking.”

Time doesn’t heal all wounds, but winning has for the Clippers. Being a fan, player, executive or employee of the organization that once had to fight more than injuries and bad trades because it was in the same city as the preeminent team of the 1980s now has its benefits. Like being able to say, “Told you so.”

For years, they were all stressed out with no place to go, except the next losing season. No respect around the NBA, certainly none around their own town.

And now look.

“After all those years of frustration and unmet expectations, getting into the playoffs is like going to the finals,” said Lawler, also the unofficial historian of the team’s California years. “For a ballclub that’s been in the playoffs year after year--15 straight years for the Lakers heading into this season, 12 straight for Boston and Milwaukee--it’s not a big deal if they get to the playoffs. It’s a pretty darn big deal for this franchise to finally reach the playoffs.”

And for some of the people who have waited so long. Or endured so much.

THE PLAYER

Ken Norman was at a comedy club in Los Angeles in 1987. The guy on stage pointed out the rookie forward as a celebrity in the house, then launched into what seemed to be an impromptu routine.

Norman remembers it this way:

“I went to a game, and the coach sat me on the front row. The coach said, ‘You want to play?’

“I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll play.’

“The coach threw me in, and I got a triple-double. The coach said, ‘Can you come back?’ I said no.

“He said, ‘Why can’t you come back? Please.’

“I said, ‘I’ve got a job to go to. I don’t want to play for you.’ ”

Said Norman recently: “It was pretty embarrassing.”

Norman was part of what was supposed to be the foundation of the team’s rebuilding when he was one of three first-round draft choices in 1987. After outlasting Joe Wolf and Reggie Williams, he is in his fifth season as a Clipper, longer than anyone else on the roster.

This might be his most satisfying season. First, he was moved into the starting lineup by Larry Brown and became an integral part of the second-half surge that led to the playoff berth. But being around when things were rotten--17-65 in his rookie season--gives him added appreciation for 1991-92.

“Now its like, ‘Can I get some tickets?’ ” he said. “It feels good. Even after practice, there are autograph seekers. You come to games, more autograph seekers. After the game, a whole lot of people. People used to just come to see the other team play. The people who are there now, they come to see us not only play, but to win.

“The biggest change for me is that on the first and the 15th--the days we get paid--I used to really feel bad. I shouldn’t say bad, but I didn’t feel real good going in there and collecting a fat check, because we weren’t winning. Now it makes you feel proud to pick up a handsome check because you feel like you really deserve it.

“It feels good to come into other cities because we’re gaining respect. Teams know that they’re going to have to play a hell of a game to beat us. You can see it in their eyes. They’re really focused. They know we’re a legitimate NBA team.”

THE ANNOUNCER

Mike Shimensky was the Clipper trainer in San Diego and Los Angeles until going to Portland before the 1987-88 season to work for the Trail Blazers. That spring, he talked with his friend Lawler about how different things were, and not only the weather.

“He said, ‘You just can’t believe how much tougher the job is when everybody’s really looking at you,’ ” Lawler said.

During five years in Philadelphia, Lawler announced the Flyers in the Stanley Cup finals and the 76ers in the NBA finals. During 13 seasons with the Clippers, in San Diego and, after a one-year sabbatical, in Los Angeles, he has announced two winning seasons and no playoff games.

With his postseason debut, Clipper variety, coming Friday, he understands now the full meaning of Shimensky’s words.

“I definitely sense some of that,” he said. “I think the butterflies flap their wings a little faster before I go on the air. I think there’s a little extra tension, and that’s good. That’s kind of nice to feel that again.

“The way it really changes my job is that it’s easier to find drama and find reasons to keep people watching or listening. It is much more challenging, frankly, when the race is over in December or January. Every night, you have the same responsibility--to go on the air and be entertaining, be interesting, be informative and give people a reason to stick around and see whether or not the team wins or losses, (while) realizing full well that the end result has no significance to the big picture in the league. Now it’s very, very easy because the drama points are so clearly drawn. From that standpoint, the job is much, much easier.

“I’m not sure easier is the right word all the time. In some ways it’s easier, and in some ways it is tougher. It’s more invigorating, certainly. I love the game. I had fun the year the club won 12 games. . . . But there’s a different level of pressure and a different level of energy when each game is so meaningful.”

A couple of weeks before the Clippers clinched the playoff berth, Lawler said, in all seriousness, that he couldn’t promise he would not cry that night while announcing the final moments. He didn’t, it turned out, but all bets are off if they have success in the playoffs.

Said the voice of the Clippers: “I have longed for this for so long.”

THE COMPANY MAN

Carl Lahr joined the San Diego Clippers in June of 1981 and stayed on when the team moved to Los Angeles eight seasons ago, giving him longer continuous service than anyone except owner Donald T. Sterling. With that came more heartache, too.

But as the vice president of marketing, the before-and-after perspective from his seat is not so cut and dried. The Clippers had popular Norm Nixon and Marques Johnson and a No. 1 draft pick, Danny Manning, to promote during various periods in their Dark Ages.

Now the marketing department has success on its side--and higher expectations.

“You had to have a tremendous amount of belief in yourself, an inner confidence to know that you were doing the right thing and you were doing a good job and that despite the record of the team, the marketing you were doing and the effort you were putting forth was the right thing,” Lahr said in recalling the previous years. “It was an inner challenge. I think if anything would summarize the difference, it’s that now you don’t need that as much.

“Now, the more successful we get, the harder it is to sell the seats because we’re constantly moving back another section, another row.”

He has tried to peddle season tickets after a 12-70 season. He has worked to make group sales in years when most people would hear “Clippers” and make some joke about Benoit Benjamin bringing two left shoes to a game.

But, Lahr said, he continually tells his salespeople that in 11 years with an organization that has epitomized frustration and losing, there has yet to be a day when he has not been excited to go to work. Going to the playoffs makes for more work, but also makes it all worthwhile.

“The team’s success gives us a chance to be successful,” he said. “It gives us a chance to take programs we might have been doing five years, six years, seven years, 10 years . . . and now for the first time they have a real shot at being successful.

“We sold out a game against Portland (on Feb. 21). We did a Mormon Night. We’ve either done a Mormon Night or tried to do a Mormon Night since way back in San Diego. I did it there and had 600 (to) 800 a night. This year, we did 4,100. The difference is, we’ve got an exciting product that people want to see; we presented it in the right way, and, wow, we sold 4,100 tickets (through the promotion) and we sold out the game.

“There are other programs like that. Some of the clinics we’ve done for years used to draw 200, and now were doing 800 or 1,100 or 1,200, I think that’s the difference. For the first time, a lot of the sound marketing programs that we have are going to start generating some serious numbers and allow us to be more successful.”

THE FAN

When Paula Hazzard was pregnant with her son Daniel, now 5 1/2, friends said she shouldn’t continue to go to Clipper games: Something about it not being fair to subject the poor unborn child to “that noise.”

Other times, people asked, “How much do they pay you to go to games?”

The Hazzards have been razzed by friends. They have been frustrated when ticket prices were raised after a pitiful season. They wonder about the financial investment made in the Clippers being equivalent to what some people put into a house.

But they have been loyal season ticket-holders since the Los Angeles debut on Nov. 1, 1984. With few regrets.

“I really don’t have any,” said Paula, who commutes to games with Steve from their home in Marina del Rey or their business in the Mid-Wilshire District. “We’ve enjoyed them all along. We wish they would have done better, and sometimes shake our heads and say, ‘How does something like that go on?’ But I’m just plain ol’ happy and don’t care about what my friends say. I like the Clippers.

“To fight the traffic to go to the Sports Arena and then wonder if our car is safe? We really like basketball, and we like watching the other teams. But we really like the Clipper players and believed that they could be good.”

And now that they are?

“There is a downside to the winning,” she said. “Now you have to wait in line for the bathroom. You have to wait in line for food service.

“We started out on the ground floor (with the team). We’d go to the Lakers’ games only when we were invited by someone with good seats, because you couldn’t get good seats. We never seriously considered dropping the (Clipper) tickets. We’ve been bothered by the constant talk of the possible Anaheim move, and then it’s another coaching change, but we’ve hung in.

“Now, our friends all want to know if we’re going to the playoffs or if we have tickets available. They don’t tease you as much. Somebody said to me there must be a little luck involved, or it must be the weather, or it’s because the Lakers are off this season.

“Sometimes, I think people find it hard to believe they are doing well. But they are. And it’s really good to see it happening with your team.”