County Is a Boon to Clippers

The Clippers have the biggest basketball star in Los Angeles, Dominique Wilkins, but no guarantee he’ll be with them after April.

The Clippers have the best center in Los Angeles, Stanley Roberts, but haven’t seen him play since November because of a knee injury.

The Clippers have the best guard in Los Angeles, Ron Harper, and are paying him $4 million this year to be such, but Harper likens his pending free agency to a convict counting down the days to parole.

The Clippers even found a way to make Danny Manning happy and a contender, even though it took a trade to Atlanta to do it.

So it goes with the Clippers. Always an if, an and or a but. The glass with them is perpetually half-empty, never full, kind of like the L.A. Sports Arena on NBA game nights.

In a town with no Magic, no Kareem and no Lakers within sniffing range of the playoffs, the Clippers remain a big red No. 2 in the popularity polls, unable to capitalize on the inevitable collapse of the neighborhood giant, still bringing up the rear on the 11 o’clock news despite the presence of the Human Highlight Film.

This is why a group of team executives ventured down to Anaheim the other day to do lunch and schmooze with members of the Orange County media. Beginning in 1994-95, the Clippers will play seven games a season at Anaheim Arena--one exhibition, six regular-season games--and club officials are absolutely entranced by the idea.

And why shouldn’t they be?

For the first time in recorded history, the Clippers are getting to sample the best of both worlds.

Seven Clipper games in Anaheim every basketball season mean seven Clipper sellouts every basketball season. That much is a lock. The Clippers have had one winning season in the last 15, are 1-5 in playoff series, have out-Angeled the Angels in front office fiascoes--and Orange County treats them as if they were the Boston Celtics.

Of course, this was discovered accidentally, by force of calamitous events. The riots of ’92 and the earthquake of ’94 left the Clippers with no choice but to move one playoff game and one regular-season game to Anaheim, and the results rate as twin peaks on the graph charting the franchise’s existence since bailing out of San Diego.

The ’92 playoff game, an elimination-delaying victory over Utah, filled Anaheim Convention Center and an adjacent auditorium, where thousands of spillover fans watched on big-screen television.

“That game has an almost mythical quality to it now,” says Joe Safety, the team’s director of communications.

“If you checked with Clipper fans,” says team executive vice president Andy Roeser, “they’d rank that as one of their all-time favorite games.”

The Jan. 27 game against the New York Knicks, played at Anaheim Arena, drew 17,507--a franchise record for a home game.

Even an exhibition against Golden State--minus Chris Webber--drew 16,500 last October, meaning that the Clippers’ two biggest home crowds in 1993-94 both happened in Orange County.

Seven Clipper games in Anaheim every basketball season also mean 35 Clipper games in L.A. every regular season. This allows the Clippers and their idiosyncratic owner, Donald T. Sterling, to indulge in the incredible Conquer L.A. fantasy. You know: run the Lakers off the front page, corner the celebrity hoops junkie market, bring Jack Nicholson over to the other side, build a glorious 20,000-seat Clipperplex on a prime chunk of real estate in Burbank, Chinatown or Shangri-La.

It ain’t gonna happen, not in our lifetime, but Donald T. believes it will, so Donald T.’s employees, wishing to remain employees, mouth the gospel as it has been handed down.

“Our goal is to build a brand new building as nice as (Anaheim Arena) in L.A.,” Roeser says.

And: “We’re not going to sell out seven games next year, we’re going to sell out 42.”

And: “Orange County is a terrific market, but that holds equally true for L.A. We view Orange County as part of our market, as opposed to a separate market. This is the program that best meets the needs of all of our market.”

The Clippers begin this seven-game dip into Anaheim as a three-year commitment--a total of 21 games through 1996-97--and then what? Is this to be construed as a testing of the waters? Or will the Clippers simply pat Orange County on the head as they pad their bank account, placating Anaheim while ruling out a permanent move one day down the line?

“I don’t know how to answer that,” Roeser says. “We feel we’ve just come here.”

On the other hand, “to be selling the ‘testing the waters’ theory really would be misrepresenting our position,” Roeser adds. “Yes, I’ve heard that question, more from the media than from fans.

“You have to know that if our intent was to move, we wouldn’t need to move in seven-game stages. It isn’t our intent to move.”

So if not the Clippers, who, then?

Roeser discounts the possibility of a third NBA franchise moving into the area (“It would be difficult”), for good reason. Fifteen percent of the Clippers’ season-ticket base comes from Orange County. Add Long Beach and the southern portion of Los Angeles County and the figure jumps to 25%.

NBA expansion plans, according to Roeser, “look beyond domestic borders, to places like Toronto, Vancouver, Mexico City.” Foreign lands. Places where people talk differently, think differently and act differently than average Americans.

I believe Orange County qualifies under these conditions but the NBA, sadly, disagrees.

“I think it’s kind of nice,” Roeser says, trying to brighten the mood, “for us to be in a position to provide an outlet for all this pent-up enthusiasm for NBA basketball.”

At 18,200 paying customers per sellout, that’s seven different kinds of nice.