COMMENTARY : For the Believers, It’s Not Over Yet

They had a dream.

The Clippers pulled out the stops Monday night. They handed out “I believe” T-shirts. They played Bruce Springsteen’s “No Surrender.” Then they got hammered by the Rockets, who were without theme T-shirts or an anthem but undoubtedly have dreams of their own.

They need a dream.

If you’re a Clipper, what else have you got?

What else got you through the San Diego years and the Benoit Benjamin years and all the seasons when the highlight was Donald T. Sterling’s lottery party?

What else brought you to this precarious moment, when the coach is able and the team is young and talented, and one-half of the eight-man rotation is nearing eligibility for free agency? What else keeps you from that sinking realization that you could be back to lottery parties in two years?

The Clippers came home from Houston, tied 1-1, with two home games ahead of them, needing two victories to win an actual playoff series and show some progress and generate some momentum and excite the city and who knows where it might end?

“I was part of a team in New York that didn’t win anything for years,” Mark Jackson said. “And we got to the playoffs and had some success. It became addictive.

“We had a taste for it. We had a hunger for it. We wanted more. After that first year, after the second year, it just was a building process.

“And that’s something we need right now. I think when you watched Game 2 (the Clipper victory at Houston), guys have that hunger, that thirst. So this is a great experience for us. It’s great for the team. It’s great for the organization.

“When you look at the media, when you look at the fans, when you watch TV, you really get a sense of what this is all about. And you feel good about being part of it.”

A year ago, they lived their dream.

They put it together under Larry Brown, made the playoffs, even won a couple of games from the Jazz. They were the young, coming team in town. It was hip to clip.

This season all but disappeared under a blizzard of news about the contractual status of Danny Manning, Ron Harper, Ken Norman and Gary Grant, but they squeezed back into the playoffs and lived to dream again.

“I remember after the last game last year,” Brown said, “Harper and some of the players talking about ‘Hey, now that we got in a series, we better experience winning one.’

“I mean, that was the goal we had from the beginning. Obviously the season hasn’t gone the way we would have liked it to have gone. But you can change a lot of things and a lot of attitudes by doing well in the playoffs.

“I looked at it, the only series this team ever won was in 1976, against the Philadelphia--I don’t know if it was the Warriors or 76ers.”

They dream, still.

In the little crowd of 12,628 in the Sports Arena on Monday was Ron Grinker, Manning’s agent. He schmoozed with Harley Frankel, his buddy among the Clipper executives. He chatted amiably with Sterling, with whom he has argued.

If there’s a chance of keeping Manning and preserving the renaissance in its present form, it lies in opportunities like these: winning important games, changing the atmosphere and the attitudes.

It didn’t happen Monday. The Rockets tied the Clippers’ offense up, sinking back in the lane, daring them to shoot from outside, running with the misses, dominating the game from the opening tap. By evening’s end, the Sports Arena looked like one of Springsteen’s ghost towns and the T-shirts should have read, “I believe?”

Of course, Wednesday will be another night.

Hope springs eternal when you’re a Clipper, if little else.