Win to Clip and Save

Donald T. Sterling

Sterling World Plaza, Beverly Hills

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Dear Donald,

You shoulda been here.

Your guys were great. They looked like a basketball team, kicking the Kings around, winning their first game after all this time. I think things are definitely looking up.

For instance, I thought it was great the other day when you acknowledged responsibility as the “top guy,” although, I have to tell you, most of us figured that one out a while ago.

Put it this way, you’ve been doing this since 1981. Only six owners predate you. Six expansion teams have started from scratch in your time and if you look up in the standings, you can see every one because they’re all better than you are.

Remember the Bulls? Won all those championships in the ‘90s? They tore the team completely apart two months ago--and they’re better than you are.

I think the next step, now that we all know who’s in charge, is for you actually to start attending games. As you said the other day, you don’t really understand the nuances of the game and you let your basketball people call the shots.

What better way to learn than to actually watch games?

You weren’t present Tuesday to see your guys fall to 0-16. You weren’t present Thursday when a loss would have made them 0-18, a new NBA record, and they were playing their third game in three nights, against the Sacramento Kings, who were here, presumably resting Wednesday night, and torched them.

I know, you probably thought it was better to stay away, so the players wouldn’t be embarrassed to see you, since they knew how badly they were letting you down. Actually, they’d like to have seen you, to show that you understood you were all in this together.

(You do know there’s a season on, don’t you? In case nobody bothered to tell you, they ended the lockout in January and put together a 50-game schedule that started in early February!)

Of course, your coaches and players were all getting pretty discouraged. Thursday was a tough one in Clipperdom, what with the trading deadline passing--and nobody getting to leave.

Look at it this way: The contracts of three of the guys--Lorenzen Wright, Rodney Rogers and Eric Piatkowski--will be up in about six weeks, and everyone knows you’ve only signed one free agent to anything more than a minimum contract in 15 years in L.A., so who knows, they may not be very optimistic about their long-range futures here.

The Trail Blazers were interested in Wright, the Nets were thinking about Rogers but at the end of the day, they were still here.

Your new coach, Chris Ford, told us before the game, he was going to talk to the guys about it.

“They have to look at it as an opportunity to make something good happen here,” he said. “By them playing well, it will help them in the end. It doesn’t behoove them for us to lose games and them not perform well. Nobody gains from that.

“I mean, if I’m a free agent, I want to go out and put my best display on. I want to show everyone, the Clippers and the entire NBA, how good I am and how valuable I am to the team. . . .

“Who’s gonna reap the rewards if they play well? They are. There’s no reason for them to say, ‘I didn’t move on to another team and just pack it in. I would hope it would light a fire.”

I know this is hard to believe . . . but it did!

Something did, anyway. They jumped all over the Kings, running up an 18-point lead early in the third quarter.

Even when their legs went and the Kings came back, they hung in.

Wright, the upcoming free agent, scored on his 25th rebound, after Sacramento drew within two.

Piatkowski, the upcoming free agent, knocked in two late threes and scored 16 points off the bench.

Rogers, the upcoming free agent, curled in a little layup to make it 101-100 with 1:50 left and Mo Taylor hugged him at halfcourt. The crowd--OK, it was only 7,884 but at least they rooted for the Clippers--stood and cheered for the last two minutes.

It was really a great night to be a Clipper. Sorry you missed it.

You know how it is, there aren’t a lot of them.

Your faithful advisor,

Mark Heisler