Is it the End or New Beginning for Clippers?

Well, that was fun while it lasted.

Of course, it didn’t last very long--try the minimum three games--and it wasn’t a lot of fun getting stepped on by the Jazz, but a Clipper has to be thankful for small favors, of which this season was one.

Even in high circles, the office of the NBA commissioner, the adventures of this plucky group inspired admiration.

“I think it is fun for the normal cycle to take its course,” said David Stern, a visitor to the building he spent years trying to nudge Clipper owner Donald T. Sterling out of.

“I give a speech sometimes, and in that speech I show how [TV] sitcoms use our game, and there is one particular “Murphy Brown” scene in which she tells her co-workers that he shouldn’t use her tickets for the Bullets game when the Celtics are in town, wait for the Clippers to come to town.

“Now that was true and funny. Now, it’s just funny because it’s ‘Murphy Brown’ and because it’s no longer true.

“What goes around in this league does come around and the Celtics are not in the playoffs and the Clippers are, with a very good, young team and they are building through the draft and they have acquired nice players so it is a lot of fun as commissioner to go around and see the Bullets and Minnesota. It is very exciting to see fans rewarded for their support.”

Indeed, there were loud, boisterous, excited, towel-waving fans in the Sports Arena, just like a playoff crowd, only at 11,747, smaller.

Nor does the “normal cycle” have much to do with the Clippers. In a league where more than 50% of the teams make the playoffs, they once failed to appear for 16 seasons before Larry Brown’s brief, glorious tenure got them there twice in a row in 1992 and 1993.

Based on their history, the Clippers were not due back until about 2009, but hard-nosed Coach Bill Fitch and some good luck--like 36 wins being good enough--gave them this spring’s bonus. The Jazz made it a token appearance, but nothing could change the fact that, for once in Clipperdom, something went right.

Unfortunately for them, this was the easy part, hitting bottom, getting high draft picks, accumulating talented young players and proving to be something approaching respectability. To keep going, they need direction and vision, a problem with a team run by committee.

Clipper officials say Sterling sees Fitch as his long-sought strongman. This would be OK, if the strongman wasn’t going into the last year of his contract, having endured a season of rumors that Brown was about to appear on the horizon--or on the beach at Malibu where he has a summer place a few houses down from Sterling--to take over.

Since your modern NBA player has an unerring sense for power politics, a coach on the last year of his contract might as well wear a bull’s-eye.

Nor does next season promise to be easy. The Clippers will no longer be jokes, but a playoff team expected to repeat. They won’t get a high lottery pick. They have $2.5 million of cap room but there are no center-type free agents available so next season will start with the usual stories about Stanley Roberts looking good in camp at (weight undisclosed.)

Sterling may think the way a leader emerges is to take a broadsword into the front office and slay everybody, but it’s not. If he wants a real leader, which is what he says as opposed to what he does, he has to anoint one.

He should extend Fitch’s contract, a modest enough initiative, if not exactly Sterling’s style. He has never rehired a coach and to date, he has had nine.

On the hopeful side, Fitch just broke the longevity-under-Sterling record by lasting three seasons.

Of course, veteran Sterling watchers think they know what he will do after this season, which he does after every season . . . nothing.

There are some things you cannot rely in Clipperdom, like postseason appearances, and some things that are eternal.