Martin Ecstatic Over Opportunity

This is nice work but getting it is the tricky part. Darrick Martin, a cat-quick point guard, lost his starting job as a UCLA senior, played with Magic Johnson’s touring team and in the CBA before making it to the NBA and has since been cut twice by the Minnesota Timberwolves and once by the Vancouver Grizzlies.

The Clippers invited him to camp after he played well for their summer league team. Now he’s hoping to stay.

“I’m real ecstatic about that, playing at home,” he says. “I think I’ve got a pretty good opportunity here. Coach [Bill] Fitch and his staff, they watched me play in the summer, they know what I can do. They helped me.”

Says Fitch: “He’s small and he’s vulnerable to post-ups and all the things they do to small guards in this league. But every year you’re looking for somebody who can do it on his own. He can go baseline to baseline. Like baseball--he’s never going to pitch nine innings for me but he can come in and pitch the ninth inning and win games.”

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Stanley Roberts, on his late arrival that had Fitch grumbling: “I notified some people. I didn’t notify him. They said I should have notified him, which I should have. I was in the wrong. It’s in the past. It’s over with. . . . I’ve just go to work hard and keep them off my back.”