For Sterling, It’s Another Letter of Condemnation

Dear Donald,

I know, I know. Things were going so great. And then the season started.

I know you’re perplexed, as usual. Everyone told you your team was so promising this time! I even picked it No. 9 in the West. I thought you might finally be over the hump!

Actually, I didn’t really think that. You still have one problem. As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and it is us.” Or in your case, “I have met the enemy and it is me.”

Score another one for your ancient foe. On the other hand, thanks for the annual column(s).

Your faithful correspondent,

Mark

In Clipperdom, they’re rounding up the usual suspect, the coach, played this time by Chris Ford.

Not to say Ford is the second coming of Pat Riley or that he has done a great job because the Clippers, who are talented and should be exciting, are moribund. It’s just that in this organization, blaming the coach is like firing the janitor.

Despondent the Clippers were when Ford got here--after the lockout last January, months after every other team had hired its coach--and despondent they’ll be when he’s gone and they’re hanging some other poor schnook out to dry.

Hiring their seventh (and presumably last) coach in the ‘90s would only be a way for the organization to pretend it has a problem whose name isn’t Donald T. Sterling. This is considered better (by top management) than cleaning out top management, starting at the very top.

Say they replace Ford with a great coach, assuming they can find one who is not only a) unemployed but b) desperate enough to work for them. They did it once, Larry Brown, who got them into the playoffs twice--and then he fled the gloom too. In Clipperdom, the constant is flight.

Heaven help the Clipper coach whose team starts badly, as this one did, because morale is always on the verge of collapse.

Ford had two starters, Mo Taylor and Derek Anderson, both upcoming free agents, both willing to stay, neither of whom even got an offer.

In training camp, team officials pointedly praised both for maintaining positive attitudes. For their part, the players talked bravely of showing what they could do, even if they noted they would be together only briefly.

They soon found themselves in against teams better than they were. At this point, you’d like your veteran leadership to kick in. The Clippers are a little light in this area too, having let seven players from last season’s team leave.

Personally, I don’t think it looks good when Rodney Rogers, who looked like a beach ball for three years, goes to Phoenix, shows up in shape and averages 12 a game off the Suns’ bench. Who even knew he had a waistline?

Rogers is a nice young man who went with the flow here. Of course, departing Clippers often drop the happy face at the city line. Rogers recently referred to the Sports Arena as “a hell hole there at USC.”

Lamond Murray spent four years learning to play here. Now they’re getting the benefit of his experience in Cleveland, where he’s starting.

Sherman Douglas was an OK point guard and a refreshing change, in that he hated the losing. He moseyed on. You’ll notice, the Clippers are still auditioning replacements.

For years, Clipper employees dreamed of moving into Staples Center, painting scenarios in which Sterling geared up for the moment and turned them into a real team.

Instead, Sterling went the other way on them, hanging them all out to dry . . . again.

Having gotten into his long-sought new arena for free, he apparently decided that would be enough. He arrived with a $26.2-million payroll--almost $8 million under the salary cap. Who knows what it would have been if the rules didn’t require him to spend 80% of the cap?

Of course, in a recent visit to the dressing room, Sterling told Lamar Odom, the wonder child the heavens inexplicably dropped in his lap, they’re keeping him, “even if it costs $300 million!”

Sterling always said he’d shell out for a real star but never felt he had one. Never having gotten that far in the process, he hasn’t figured out, even real stars need teammates and reasons to stay.

FACES AND FIGURES

It’s official, he’s unhappy: The Knicks’ Patrick Ewing says he’s “so tired of all the garbage here. With everything that’s happened the last couple of years, maybe I’ve overstayed my welcome here. Some days, I think that.” Then there’s the issue of where he’d go, at 37 years of age and $15 million a year. Then there’s the issue of what you can expect from fining a $15-million-a-year player $20,000: Ewing, fined twice for spurning interviews by the league and the Knicks, walked past the beat writers again, telling them, “I’m not interviewing today. Y’all can fine me if you want.”

Mutiny on the Wizards: Coach Gar Heard, who has been going around and around with Rod Strickland since he got there, called the team “soft” after another one-sided home loss, this one to Utah. Actually Heard was being nice. He could have said “comatose.” Nevertheless, Strickland went off, noting, “I don’t agree with that soft [stuff]. . . . We don’t need them making scapegoats of us for them. We’re all in this together. The coaches didn’t do the job and the players didn’t do the job. Period. We’re all taking the blame for this.”

Next summer, Orlando and Chicago will have the most cap room--about $18 million each--and Magic Coach Doc Rivers knows which he’d choose if he were a free agent. Predictably, it’s a city in Florida. “We have a much stronger nucleus of players than Chicago now that we’ll keep,” Rivers says. “That’s a huge advantage. Orlando won’t be hard to sell. Orlando has no state income tax. And who wants to try to fill Michael Jordan’s shoes? Look, I grew up in Chicago. I also know how cold it gets.” The Magic is expected to be hot after Toronto’s Tracy McGrady, who is from Florida and is building a home in Orlando.

Oh, the Clippers will have $15 million worth of cap room too, but nobody knows if they can find players to take any of it, or if Sterling will offer any of it. . . . Vancouver General Manager Stu Jackson, who has a shifting ownership situation and only this season on his own contract, axed Coach Brian Hill. Not that Jackson’s prospects look much brighter after investing $9 million a year in Bryant Reeves, passing up such draft prospects as Vince Carter, Paul Pierce and Odom and selecting Steve Francis, who didn’t want to play there and had to be traded. . . . Then there was Danny Ainge, whose Suns had won nine of 12 when he resigned to spend more time with his family. No one wants to believe that’s all there is to the story, but Ainge was never really an NBA coach in the first place. He was too open, too loose, too happy-go-lucky. Thank heavens, he got out in time.

Sign of the times: Travis Best after the Pacers struggled to beat the Bulls: “It was pretty tough getting up for a game with Chicago but they are an NBA team.” Further sign of the times: After the Bulls beat New Jersey for their second win, a fan in the United Center yelled at the departing Nets: “Thanks for stinking worse than us!” . . . Not that he’s losing it or anything: Celtic Coach Rick Pitino lost Pierce for two weeks because of a sprained ankle and publicly blamed it on Pierce for taking off a wrap designed to reduce swelling. “He was told not to take it off and he took it off, not realizing,” Pitino said. “Now he’s on the IR [injured reserve].” Pierce said the trainer told him he could take it off if it hurt. Of course, what’s the harm? By the time the Celtics have to re-sign Pierce as a free agent, Pitino will be back in the NCAA. . . . Denver Coach Dan Issel, on Ainge’s announcement he was resigning because he’d become distant from his family: “My kids are both basically gone now and Cheri [Issel’s wife] kind of likes it when I’m distant.”