Old Expectations May Get Flipped

Who’s going to be better--the Lakers or the Clippers?

I don’t mean tonight. I don’t mean which team will win tonight’s season opener.

I mean this season. Who’s going to be better--Randy Pfund and the leaner, quicker Los Angeles Lakers or Larry Brown and the larger, thicker Los Angeles Clippers?

Place your bets.

Which team will win more games?

Has this question ever come up before? Perhaps never in NBA-LA history has there been any argument over which team is going to win more games, the Lakers or Clippers.

Last season, most of us were still too shocked by Earvin Johnson’s bombshell to even think about whether the Lakers would--as usual--have the best pro basketball team in Los Angeles.

But today, who can say?

Will the Clippers win 50 games and the Lakers 40? Or 45 each? Or 35 each?

You could flip a coin. Better still, you could let Jackie Slater of the Rams flip a coin, then be sure to call tails so you can win.

If old Jackie had been calling coin flips for the Lakers, Magic Johnson would have either been a junior at Michigan State or a Chicago Bull.

(I’m still not sure why the Rams should be having so much trouble with coin tosses when they are the only team in sports with a player named Flipper.)

Tonight’s NBA opener at the Sports Arena will begin with a jump ball, not a coin toss. So, right from the jump we could discover something very important about these two teams.

Namely, whether either of their centers can get off the ground.

Vlade Divac is back with the Lakers after missing most of last season because of a bad back. Come to think of it, most of the Lakers missed most of last season.

Stanley Roberts is now with the Clippers after spending most of last season with the Orlando Magic. Stanley’s so big, when he left Orlando, it left two roster openings.

In the deals that brought Stanley Roberts and John Williams to Los Angeles, the big winners were Wendy’s, McDonald’s and 7-Eleven.

It could be that Laker and Clipper forwards will have to handle the opening tips--maybe Danny Manning and Sam Perkins. But don’t worry. The Detroit Pistons have won championships with Bill Laimbeer playing center, and Laimbeer can’t leap an ant.

I hear there is a new brand of shoes called Air Laimbeers. When you press the pump, it adds water to the concrete.

The only other comparison I can make between the Pistons and Clippers is that neither ended up wanting William Bedford or Don MacLean. MacLean still has time to make the Guinness Book of Records. He is now with his third team and hasn’t played a game yet. Be sure to check today’s Transactions listing.

For a team that made the playoffs and almost kicked Utah’s jazz, the Clippers sure did send a bunch of people packing. Charles Smith, gone. Doc Rivers, gone. Olden Polynice, gone. I mean, what were the odds of us coming to the 1993 season opener to watch Mark Jackson and Kiki Vandeweghe?

The team did show considerable improvement last season, getting Danny Manning and Ron Harper recuperated at the same time, getting a good coach in Larry Brown and getting a good fan in Billy Crystal, who has firmly established himself as the Anti-Nicholson. I believe that Billy will out-shout Jack this season and say funnier stuff to the referees.

New kids on the block Roberts, Jackson, Vandeweghe, Williams, Elmore Spencer, Randy Woods and Jaren Jackson will introduce themselves to the public, day by day. Frankly, the only ones I have ever seen play a full game of basketball are Jackson and Vandeweghe, and half the time I can’t even remember where Woods went to college.

Ken Norman continues to be the smartest draft choice the Clippers ever made--anybody could have picked Danny Manning--and Loy Vaught is such a good rebounder and good guy that I would love to see him make us forget Charles Smith, who any week now should be telling the New York Knicks how they are misusing him.

The Lakers, well, it appears that the imminent James Worthy trade rumored since James was about 21 years old is not going to happen. And funny, but Byron Scott and A.C. Green still seem to be on the team as well.

So, the Lakers have the built-in advantage of guys who are familiar with one another, which will come in handy now that Magic is gone again. Unlike the Clippers, the Lakers won’t be breaking in many new people. Their chemistry is fairly intact. The only question is: How diluted are their chemicals?

What’s new is the coach. But even he, Pfund, is no stranger to these guys; he is family. The only real newcomers to the Lakers are second-string guards and a 36-year-old substitute center. So, in essence, these are the same as last season’s Lakers, the potential upside being that Worthy and Divac won’t be disabled, the potential downside being that Pfund must follow in the footsteps of Mike Dunleavy, who turned out to be one hell of a coach.

Scott, in exhibitions at least, looks 21 again. How wonderful it would be if the Byron of the ‘90s transformed into the Byron of the ‘80s. As for Green, I personally think A.C. single-handedly held the Lakers together, athletically and spiritually, through much of the madness of 1991-92, and he continues to be this team’s smartest draft choice.

Who’s better--Lakers or Clippers?

It depends on those centers. As Divac goes, so will go the Lakers. As Roberts goes, so will go the Clippers.

I’ll take the Lakers to win 42 games, the Clippers 50. Wow, that was a weird sentence to write.