The Wright Place

He can’t stand, but that doesn’t mean he can’t get in his son’s face.

He can’t walk, but that doesn’t mean he can’t chase his son around the basketball court, barking him down, shoving him in the right direction, hugging him hard.

He can’t jump. But he makes Lorenzen Wright soar, and the playoff-bound Clippers with him.

His name is Herb Wright and he was spotted at the Sports Arena on Friday during a game against the Lakers, sitting underneath the basket, same as every home game.

He sat there, waiting for his son to glance over so he could remind him to crouch low, use his jump hook, get up on his toes.

He reminded him of all these things with his hands.

“My father,” Wright said, “taught me not to be scared of anything.”

The Clippers lost the game, but have gained respect and a playoff berth somewhat because a relatively scrawny 21-year-old kid has listened to his rock-solid dad.

“I think I’ve matured a lot this year,” says the son.

“He’s not there yet,” warns the dad.

When the Clippers open the first round in Utah next week, providing many in Los Angeles of their first glimpse this season of the league’s most ignored team, look for the son.

He is 6 feet 11, 240 pounds, all of it in his arms and legs.

He will be playing against centers who, when standing next to him, will look like a couch next to an ottoman.

But he will play until he drops, wrapping his arms around biggest chests, leaping around slower feet, scoring and scuffling and never changing expression.

Before Friday, he didn’t lead the team in average points (7.3) or rebounds (6.1), but nobody has plugged a bigger hole better.

First wow: The Clippers, nine games under .500overall, are 24-26 with him starting at center in place of injured Stanley Roberts and Kevin Duckworth.

Second wow: He is a high-priced rookie, the seventh overall draft pick, walked softly into the league after only two college seasons at Memphis . . . and Bill Fitch loves him.

“You ride him, you criticize him, you praise him . . . he takes it all the same way,” the coach said. “He’s a real good kid. Totally bought into the hard work we do around here.”

The kid has had a lot of practice.

In 1983, Herb ejected three men from a Memphis, Tenn., recreation center where he was serving as director. The men returned with a gun. One of them shot him in the back, severing his spinal cord.

He was 31 at the time, a former college player for Mississippi and pro star in Finland.

His son Lorenzen was 8.

The bar had been set.

“I wanted the children to know that no matter how I was limited physically, I was still their dad,” Herb said.

So he worked Lorenzen hard at basketball every summer that his son--who lived with his mom in Mississippi--visited him in Memphis.

Then just before his senior season in high school, Lorenzen moved in with his Dad. They have been inseparable since.

Running laps? Lorenzen runs one way, Herb wheels the other way.

Learning to play the pivot? Herb shows his son the proper moves on the court in the wheelchair, his son imitates him on his feet.

When Lorenzen was drafted by the Clippers, his father left his home and junior college coaching job, took his other son, and joined him.

Herb says it was his idea.

“I could not let him go to Los Angeles by himself,” he said. “He’s a young kid, there’s a lot of temptation.”

Lorenzen said it was his idea.

“I have to have my dad here,” he said. “He is my inspiration.”

The father and the younger son, Lou, live in Westchester, where Lou plays on the high school freshman team.

The son, and his fiancee and two children, live five minutes away.

It was the father’s inspiration that recently led Wright to ask for a brief leave to take care of fiancee Sherra Robinson during the birth of baby girl Loren.

Fitch, cool dude that he is, agreed.

Wright missed a 10-point loss in Miami. He ignored the talk-show grumbling.

“These are my children, I am their father, and I will be there for them like my father is for me,” Wright said.

Every day, they talk. The son calls the dad, “Herb.” The dad calls the son, “Gan-ya,” after his middle name, Vern-Gagne, which the dad says used to be the name of a professional wrestler.

Every night they talk.

After most practices, they talk.

After Friday’s shoot-around, Wright ended an interview by inviting the reporter to come upstairs to the parking lot.

“You want to talk to my dad, I’m sure he’s in the parking lot,” he said.

The parking lot?

“Yeah, waiting for me,” he said.

Sure enough, there he was, in a truck, with a window rolled down so Lorenzen could stick his head inside.

For 10 minutes, while other players signed autographs or sped off to an afternoon in the city, Wright listened to his father talk about the problems in defending Shaquille O’Neal.

“My son is not yet strong enough . . . but he will be,” Herb said.

In the back of the truck’s cab was a wheelchair. It looked strangely basic.

“None of that electronic stuff for me, it’s all hands,” Herb said.

And ramps? Well, Lorenzen wanted to install one outside his new Westchester home.

Herb wouldn’t let him.

“It’s three steps,” he said. “I said, ‘Son, we’re going to work on your weightlifting.’ ”