Familiar Hole for Clippers : Pro basketball: Team faced with trading Manning now or getting nothing for him when he leaves as a free agent.

One starting forward gone, one to go?

It’s a pretty good possibility for the Clippers, who Wednesday lost free agent Ken Norman to the Milwaukee Bucks and now prepare for Phase II: taking offers on Danny Manning.

Although they decline to publicly discuss it, team officials have decided to try to trade their best player before the 1993-94 season opens in early October. The alternative is another season of contract-related distractions or, worse, losing him without getting anything in return as an unrestricted free agent in a year.

The biggest problem is that Manning can practically call the shots, just as Charles Smith did in the same situation last summer and Norman did in the last few days. The Clippers have accepted that they are dealing from weakness, aware that a trade must involve a team Manning wants to stay with because no one will give market value for an All-Star forward who isn’t interested in staying beyond next spring.

The drawback for any prospective suitor is that Manning cannot provide anything beyond an oral commitment. As someone who accepted a qualifying offer, he is prohibited from signing another contract until March 15 at the earliest. But the advantages of trading for him, instead of waiting and trying to land him as a free agent, are considerable: Everyone else has to wait until July 1 to try to sign him, and a team has unlimited flexibility with the salary cap to retain its own player.

Manning and his agent, Ron Grinker, will not supply the Clippers with a list of teams in which they are interested. The more likely course, as happened with Smith, who eventually went to the Knicks in a three-team deal that brought Mark Jackson and Stanley Roberts to Los Angeles, is that team officials will bring the player and the agent into the picture once substantive talks have developed.

Grinker and Manning figure to be cooperative in the process. That’s good and bad news for the Clippers--good because it could make for a smooth transition, bad because it is an indication of how much their best player wants to leave.

“That’s the way things should go,” Grinker said of the process. “But knowing the Clippers, nothing simple should ever be expected. An ordinary professional team would do it that way. I don’t know who makes the decisions there anymore. It doesn’t matter what decisions (General Manager) Elgin Baylor or (Executive Vice President) Harley Frankel make unless it is ratified.

“I just presume it will be in the best interest if everyone comes to the realization that they have to move Danny. If they haven’t, shame on them.”

Baylor declined comment.

Manning does not appear to have a short list of teams that interest him. He has grown to like Los Angeles, so the Lakers are attractive.

The most serious of the recent trade talks, involving Charlotte, appear to have been dragged down by salary cap complications, before the teams could even agree on the players involved. Plus, Kendall Gill, who would have come to the Clippers, remains unsigned and thus unable to be traded.

Clipper Notes

The just-released exhibition schedule includes several intriguing games at the start: Oct. 16 against Golden State at the new Anaheim Arena, Oct. 17 against Ken Norman and the Milwaukee Bucks at the Sports Arena, Oct. 20 against the Lakers at Las Vegas and Oct. 21 against Larry Brown and the Indiana Pacers at the Sports Arena. The exhibition season then finishes with a four-game trip with stops at Chicago, Indiana, Dallas and San Antonio. . . . Summer league play begins Tuesday at UC Irvine. Second-round pick Leonard White is expected to play without a contract, but Terry Dehere will not. Among the returnees, Randy Woods has committed to play. Johnny Rogers, a former star at Irvine who has been playing in Europe, is also on the Clipper roster.

It now appears that the contract Danny Manning almost signed was worth $26 million over five years, not $25 million. Also, two team officials say the Clippers later increased the ante to an average of $6 million per year. Agent Ron Grinker denies that. . . .