Clippers Get Dehere With Tough Choice : Basketball: Seton Hall guard’s quickness is the deciding factor. Grant might be history.

Going for depth over possible need, the Clippers on Wednesday selected guard Terry Dehere of Seton Hall with the 13th pick in the NBA draft.

For a change, the pick wasn’t booed by the fans watching at the Sports Arena, even though it meant passing on Fairfax High product Chris Mills, who went 22nd to Cleveland.

It could also mean the end of Gary Grant as a Clipper.

The arrival of the Big East player of the year opens the very real possibility the Clippers will not give Grant the qualifying offer of approximately $1.47 million today. If that is the case, Grant, an occasional starter during his five years with the team and their best defensive guard last season, would immediately become an unrestricted free agent. The Clippers could still re-sign him, but it would be open bidding, with Indiana’s Larry Brown sure to be interested.

That is only one of the possibilities the Clippers are facing. Another is that, should Ken Norman leave as an unrestricted free agent, Dehere would move into the starting lineup at shooting guard alongside Mark Jackson, and Ron Harper would become a full-time small forward for the first time in his career. Otherwise, Dehere could vie for Grant’s spot as the third guard.

The Clippers could have picked Mills, a dependable shooter and good rebounder for a small forward, as security, and considered him to the end. Ultimately, though, they were concerned by his lack quickness.

That is one of Dehere’s strengths, along with good defensive skills and his projected ability to play some point guard. The drawback is that he is a streak shooter.

“I’m a big believer in athletes,” said Barry Hecker, the Clippers’ director of scouting. “I like speed and quickness. I think Chris Mills is an excellent shooter, maybe even better than Terry at this point. But I really like quickness and speed if you can find it in a player.”

Dehere, a 6-foot-2, 190-pounder who played on the same high school team in Jersey City, N.J., as No. 7 pick Bobby Hurley, was a second-team All-American as a senior. He was also a finalist for the Wooden Award and left Seton Hall as the Big East’s all-time leading scorer. Hecker compares him to John Starks of the Knicks.

“It’s a great feeling,” Dehere said in a conference call from Auburn Hills, Mich., site of the draft. “Outstanding. I felt my two workouts (with the Clippers) went very well. I felt comfortable that I had a good shot at becoming a Clipper.

“There was a lot of speculation I would stay home and play for (New) Jersey. But after high school and college, I wanted to go play elsewhere if the opportunity presented itself. And it did.”

Even if it means coming to a team without a coach.

“It’s definitely strange,” said Dehere, who grew up watching Jackson play for St. John’s and then the Knicks. “But I’m just happy I’m a member of the organization. I have no control over the coach, but it’s a funny situation. But I have the kind of personality to fit in with any coach.”

The Clippers were the first team to go into the draft without a coach since the Miami Heat in its expansion year of 1988.

With their second pick, No. 53 overall, the next-to-last choice in the draft acquired from the Knicks in last summer’s Jackson trade, the Clippers landed Leonard White, a 6-7 forward from Southern University some had going in the late first or early second round.

“What happens is, a lot of players don’t do particularly well in the postseason camps, and the last impression of a player sticks with people,” General Manager Elgin Baylor said of White. “They have a tendency to stick with that instead of the entire three or four years of school. I was surprised he was still there. But happy.”

Clipper Notes

Who was booed by the approximately 2,500 watching on big-screen televisions at the Sports Arena? Larry Brown. . . . Randy Woods, last year’s top pick, has already committed to playing in the summer league at UC Irvine and the Clippers hope Elmore Spencer will also attend. . . . Among the free agents at the recently completed mini-camp were former UCLA Bruin Darren Daye and ex-NBA players Adrian Caldwell and Harold Pressley. . . . The Clippers raised more than $4,000 in a silent auction held during the draft, with proceeds for the Neighborhood PRIDE community program.