CLIP-ON LAKERS

They are a couple of all-century Clippers, if anybody had the humor and the stomach to put together that curious honor roll.

Ron Harper and Benoit Benjamin--you remember them, don’t you?

They were on the Clippers, long ago.

“We were the Clippers,” Harper said with a laugh recently.

They were alongside Danny Manning and coached by Don Casey. They played with Gary Grant, Charles Smith and Tom Garrick.

They played on a Clipper team--maybe the quintessential Clipper team for all the crushed hope and listlessness that preceded and followed--that could have been so good, yet turned out fascinatingly, frustratingly not good.

So, like a couple of well-preserved gunslingers best known for the bad old days, where does fate decide to reunite them in their fading NBA days?

“Benoit Benjamin and Ron Harper . . . Lakers!” Harper said. “Do you believe that?”

Out of the blue, in a two-week span, it happened.

In a measure of both the current spare-parts Laker roster situation and the youth and talent that was on the Clippers of the late 1980s and early 1990s, Harper and Benjamin, both in their mid-30s, are being expected to play relatively significant Laker roles a decade after they played together at the Sports Arena.

Harper is a starter, at least until Kobe Bryant is sound, and perhaps later, because he is a trusted Phil Jackson component. Benjamin, in his second stint as a Laker, could serve as Shaquille O’Neal’s main backup.

“I think it’s great for them,” said Grant, now a member of the Portland Trail Blazers. “I knew a lot of us on that team were going to win championships and play a long time.”

Only not with the Clippers, of course.

Harper is a Laker, complete with a two-year, $4.2-million contract that will take him beyond his 38th birthday, because he found a post-Clipper elixir: Leaving as a free agent after the 1993-94 season and hooking up with Scottie Pippen and eventually Michael Jordan, Jackson and the Chicago Bulls.

Three championship rings do a lot to wash away a stigma.

“Everybody gets their fun, drives big cars and has nice clothes,” Harper said. “But what sets you apart from them is when you have championship rings. And I’ve got three championship rings. I’m separate--by far.”

Benjamin, of course, has won no titles, with Jackson or anybody else, except perhaps for “biggest frittering away of a marvelously skilled 7-footer,” but seven teams and nine years of passable NBA journeyman service after the Clippers finally traded him during the 1990-91 season, that’s barely apropos now.

Jackson signed Benjamin because he was a big body on a team desperate for size of any kind, and Benjamin might stick around because he has gotten himself into decent shape, he has experience, and his teammates, especially O’Neal, have taken a liking to the big lug.

“Back when he was getting the big money, everybody was looking at him crazy and complaining,” forward John Salley said. “Now he works hard after practice. I think he’s working harder now than he used to work.”

Oh, yes, back then.

Harper and Benjamin were teammates for little more than a year, from November 1989 (when Harper arrived from Cleveland in the Danny Ferry trade) through February 1991 (the Benjamin trade), though it seems far longer.

Benjamin was a Clipper for four full seasons before Harper arrived, and averaged 16.4 points and 8.8 rebounds in 1988-89. Harper, who blew out his knee 28 games after being traded from Cleveland, stayed for two full seasons after Benjamin left. They both were overjoyed upon departure.

And if there is, as Jackson wryly describes it, “the story of the Clippers,” Harper and Benjamin both deserve a chapter apiece, or more.

“I’m a survival-rate kind of guy,” Harper said. “I’ll survive. I’ll find a way to just survive. . . .

“[He and Benjamin] try not to talk about those days any more. Those days are gone. The day I stop playing this game, I’m not going to think about the days I played out here on that other team, believe me.”

Harper spent much of his final days as a Clipper rolling his eyes, comparing playing for the Clippers to “doing time,” and making public pleadings for the Clippers to let him go.

“Hey, I was forced to say those things,” Harper said. “We had a solid team. We had some players that they didn’t sign. Coach Larry Brown, he was gone. So I was there alone. You expect me to carry the whole team? Come on, that’s not fair.”

When the Bulls were considering signing Harper, with Jordan recently retired but Jackson suspecting he would be back eventually, Jackson spent some time with Harper to make sure he was not lost to the Clipper culture of decline.

“We spent a lot of time with Ron before we signed him in Chicago, you know, to hear the story of the Clippers and his own rationale as to what was difficult about it,” Jackson said.

Once he got to know Harper, Jackson said he understood what motivated Harper’s need to flee.

“He railed against it,” Jackson said. “I wasn’t here in L.A. during that time, but I could see he bucked against that mentality.

“But he and Benoit were there, and they were partially responsible for what happened on that team. So we used to have a lot of fun kidding Ron about that when he got to Chicago, how much better it was to be on the other side.”

With the Bulls, who regained Jordan’s services at the tail end of Harper’s first Bull season and went on to win three titles in a row starting with 1995-96, Harper morphed into a brilliant role player, never averaging more than 9.2 points a game during the title run but moving crisply without the ball and forming, with Jordan and Pippen, a devastating perimeter line of defense.

“You have to understand that when I came into this league, I was known as an offensive guy who just played the game for himself, which is not true at all,” Harper said.

“When you’re on a team that plays hard, you get known as that. There’s been a lot of great NBA guys in this league who have not won a championship. They’re known for what they’ve done.”

So, does Jackson’s previous experience with Harper make it easier to take Benjamin?

“Benoit,” Jackson said with a chuckle, “doesn’t make it easy to do anything.”

Benjamin has rattled around the league, going from Seattle to the Lakers to New Jersey to Vancouver to Milwaukee to Toronto to Philadelphia for the last two seasons, though he played in only 20 games those two years.

But a coach who won titles with Bill Wennington and Luc Longley just might find something to do with Benjamin, who obviously has gotten into better shape and who has come to the Lakers with a positive attitude.

“Phil sees something in his size and in things that he can do,” Harper said. “He will help this team. Phil can find some guys who you may not think they can help, but he finds a way to say, look, I need you to do this job or that job.”

The Lakers’ signing of Benjamin, 35, right before training camp elicited mostly catcalls, and Benjamin said he is used to it by now.

“It really didn’t bother me because I knew I had worked hard and I know what’s in my heart,” Benjamin said. “I always use a saying from the Bible, you know, they talked about Jesus Christ, they crucified him, but he saved the world so we could have the tree of life.

“I’ve been ridiculed for quite some time. . . . But one thing about it, I’ve played 14 years. I’ve accomplished some things in this league. Ultimately, my goal is to win a championship and that’s what I’m fighting for now. This is it for me. . . .

“It’s kind of unique playing for Phil. He’s so demanding. He’s been there before. I know that he knows what it takes. You don’t really have a problem with somebody that’s experienced and knows what it takes.”

Does he ever think about the Clippers, and what it would’ve been like if all those players had stayed together all these years?

“Oh yeah, all the time,” Benjamin said. “The Clippers had some pretty good talent. But [Clipper owner] Donald Sterling’s always been a good friend of mine. I wish them much success.”

Said Harper: “I don’t think about that team any more. I’ve got my championship rings now. They’re the same over there, still, right?”