Clippers Hope History Repeats Itself at Convention Center

A Los Angeles professional basketball team, unable to use the Sports Arena, shifts a playoff game to the Anaheim Convention Center and responds with a victory.

Whether the Clippers match that scenario won’t be known until the fourth game of the Western Conference quarterfinal series against the Utah Jazz concludes today. But it happened three times to the Stars of the defunct American Basketball Assn. in 1970.

The franchise, which began as the Anaheim Amigos in the 1967-68 season, won three of its four playoff games at the convention center. One of the Stars’ stars was Mack Calvin, now a Clipper assistant coach.

“It was like playing in a high school gym,” Calvin recalled Saturday after the Clippers’ practice at Loyola Marymount. “The fans were sitting right on the sidelines and on top of you. The crowd really went wild. It was exciting ABA basketball, with a lot of scoring. It was a great feeling.”

Calvin, who played in several small arenas during his seven ABA seasons, believes the Clippers will have similar success as the volume and proximity of the expected 7,400 fans will compensate for what ordinarily would have been a capacity crowd of 15,800 at the Sports Arena.

“Our players are really going to like playing there,” Calvin said. “People talk about us losing home-court advantage because we can’t seat 14,000 to 15,000 people, but I think it will be a tremendous advantage. It will be like a seventh man.”

Stretching the symmetry between the Stars and Clippers, 1970 was the first time the Stars had made the playoffs, but the franchise was only in its third season, second if the season in Anaheim is discounted. The Clippers are in the playoffs for the first time since the franchise took that name in 1978 when the Buffalo Braves moved to San Diego.

The 1969-70 Stars won 17 of their final 21 regular-season games to finish in fourth place in the five-team Western Division, a game ahead of the New Orleans Buccaneers.

After splitting their first two playoff games against the Dallas Chaparrals (now the San Antonio Spurs), the Stars were down two games to one, after a 116-104 loss before 971 at the Sports Arena April 20. It was to be their last game at the facility for more than a month because of an ice show and other scheduling conflicts.

The team’s first game in Anaheim proved to be a memorable one for Calvin. In fact, initially, it was the only game he could remember playing there.

Calvin, then a 22-year-old rookie who had played at Long Beach Poly High, Long Beach College and USC, scored 44 points and set an ABA playoff record with 16 assists in a 144-138 victory in front of 2,921. Ron Boone, who will be present at today’s game as the analyst on Utah’s television broadcast, scored 14 points in 26 minutes for Dallas.

“It sounded like a large, enthusiastic bunch,” Calvin told reporters after the game. “It made us feel good, and when we were tired in the closing minutes, they gave us the lift we needed.”

The Stars wrapped up the semifinal series with victories in Dallas and Long Beach.

Up next were the Denver Rockets, the Western Division champions who featured the league’s most valuable player, 20-year-old Spencer Haywood, the original “hardship” case who had turned pro following his sophomore season at the University of Detroit.

The Stars lost the opener in Denver, but won the next four, including a 119-113 victory in Anaheim before 4,468, the Stars’ largest home crowd of the season by nearly 1,000. Calvin led the Stars with 31.

After losing the first two games of the ABA finals at Indiana, the Stars rallied from a 21-point deficit for a 109-106 victory over the Pacers before what Dan Hafner of The Times described as, “5,780 screaming, stomping fans,” at the Convention Center.

The Pacers responded with a 142-120 victory the next night in front of 7,027 in Anaheim, in what would be the final non-exhibition professional basketball game played in the county until today. The Stars won the next game in Indianapolis, before the Pacers closed out the series with a 111-107 Sports Arena victory.

The franchise then was moved to Utah, where it won the 1970-71 championship. The Stars folded 16 games into the 1975-76 season, the last for the ABA.

Today’s game marks the fifth time the Clippers have played in the county. While representing San Diego, they defeated the Lakers, 105-94 in a 1979 exhibition game seen by 7,502 in Anaheim. The Clippers lost exhibition games at Rancho Santiago College in 1985, Titan Gym in 1986 and the Bren Center in 1988.

Anaheim once had a pro basketball team it could call its own in the 1967-68 season. The Amigos averaged about 500 fans per game at the Convention Center and lost more than $500,000 before being moved to Los Angeles.