Cellars Market

By BILL PLASCHKE

April 12, 2000 12 AM PT

Tuesday night, Staples Center, pregame with the Clippers.

The end of basketball civilization as we know it.

Keith Closs is holding a conversation with a fan. The fan is sitting 20 rows up. They understand each other perfectly.

A group of young people wearing shirts reading “Odom” are sitting by the Clipper basket, waiting for a visit from the man who purchased their tickets.

One is asked, what is this Odom’s first name?

“No idea,” he says. “Just Odom.”

Down the court, another group is wearing shirts that read “Olowokandi.”

They have been sitting for 25 minutes, waiting for a prearranged meeting with the man who bought their tickets.

“He has to get ready for the game,” a club official says.

“Right,” laughs one.

Through a tunnel and down a hallway, in the Clipper locker room, there is a television blaring.

This is not unusual. The Laker locker room always has a television blaring.

But the Lakers are always watching films of that night’s opponent.

The Clippers are watching ESPN “SportsCenter.”

Tyrone Nesby looks up. Good guy, plays hard, he’s here because last summer, the Clippers forced him to stay by matching a three-year, $8.9-million contract offer from the San Antonio Spurs.

Nesby was sitting in his Las Vegas home when he received the phone call informing him of the match.

He is asked what he said.

“I was like, ‘Oh, damn,’ ” he remembers. “I was like, ‘I’ve got to go back there?”

This was funny. About five years ago.

This was cute. When they played in a building as dank and smelly as they were.

This was lovable. When they won more than 20 games a year.

Now it is none of those things. Now the Clippers are as endearing as a crumbling schoolhouse, a Santa Monica oil slick, a bad day to breathe.

A local curiosity has become a civic embarrassment.

If Donald Sterling won’t try to win in a new arena with fresh fans and shiny hopes, he never will.

If this can’t work with three top young players--including two top-five picks--it never will.

“The team is cursed,” Nesby says.

It is time for an exorcism.

No offense to the club’s many fine employees who are not named Sterling.

But it is time to stop wondering when the Clippers will improve.

It is time to start wondering how we can get them out of our face.

You grab an NBA rule book.

Can the team be thrown out of the league for incompetence?

Turns out, only if Sterling is doing stuff such as fixing the games. Darn. His team being in such constant disarray, he doesn’t need to fix the games.

“No chemistry around here, period,” Nesby says. “Every year, four or five new guys. Then when you get used to playing with them, they get rid of those guys and bring in four or five new ones.”

You grab a phone, dial Staples Center boss Tim Leiweke.

Can the team be thrown out of an arena that they are staining like spilled Coke?

“They have a six-year agreement, but they have the right to get out after three,” Leiweke says. “If they have two more years like this one, my guess is, they’ll get out because they can’t afford the building.”

Can’t wait two more years.

You grab the phone again, call the Better Business Bureau of the Southland.

Can the team be forced to shut its doors because of consumer fraud?

“The only way we would be involved in this is if a consumer paid for a great seat and was given a lousy seat, something like that,” said Mary Lou Diaz, the organization’s director of information services. “We can’t do anything just because their team loses 100-0.”

And you thought nobody saved Clipper box scores.

If they can’t be shut down or punished or thrown out . . . how about just hauled away?

You call Asbury Environmental Services, a local place that moves hazardous waste.

You talk to a guy named Daniel.

“We have big trucks here, but I don’t know . . . “ he says.

OK, so they aren’t leaving Los Angeles.

How about, if Los Angeles leaves them?

You call the city attorney’s office.

Can the team be sued on behalf of a city’s reputation? Can the Clippers be forced to drop the name, “Los Angeles” because it represents nightly libel?

“Can’t happen,” a spokesman said. “The name is a common right that anyone can use.”

So what to do?

How about ignoring them? How about, every newspaper stop covering them and every television station stop broadcasting their, um, highlights.

You pick up the phone, call your boss.

“We can’t stop covering them,” says Bill Dwyre, Times sports editor. “They are still members of the National Basketball Assn.”

Besides, Dwyre said, what about all those poor readers who come to Clipper games to watch the other guys play?

“If 6,000 show up to watch John Stockton, then it is a news event,” Dwyre said.

On this Tuesday night, against the Phoenix Suns, there are more than 6,000 fans. But far less than that are cheering, or even paying much attention.

There are empty seats in the front row, entire empty sections on top.

It looks like a Laker crowd, but 30 minutes before a Laker game, or 20 minutes afterward.

The game begins, the Clippers jump out to a 22-9 lead, Phoenix calls timeout.

Of the 14,724 announced fans, one stands and cheers.

At Clipper games, you look for these things.

He is incidentally, not the man wearing the bag on his head that reads, “Clipper Anonymous.”

There is no truth to the rumor that for the final Clipper home game next week against Portland, ushers will be asking, “Paper or plastic?”

Is is any wonder that before the game, when Nesby is asked about endorsements or public appearances, he grins?

“None,” he said. “We don’t do any of that stuff.”

He is told that a friend recently tried to buy a Clipper jersey in town, and could not.

“Doesn’t surprise me,” he says.

A couple of lockers down, Michael Olowokandi chimes in.

“You can buy my shirt at www.kandiman.com!” he shouts. “Forget Foot Locker, just get on your computer.”

It’s every man for himself around here.

Finishing his second year in the league, Olowokandi can be most graciously described as a bust.

The second young star, Maurice Taylor, can be kindly categorized as a player who is absolutely dying to blow this popsicle stand when he becomes a free agent this summer.

The third young star, rookie Lamar Odom, is a defection waiting to happen.

“They’re putting so much on him, too much on him,” Nesby says of Odom. “You just look at him and see it’s affecting him.”

Early in the fourth quarter, the crowd suddenly erupts in the loudest cheers of the night, and with good reason.

Anthony Heard has just made a halfcourt shot.

Anthony Heard . . . Anthony Heard . . .

A new CBA pickup? A 10-day signee?

Um, no.

He was a fan pulled out of the stands as part of an automobile promotion.

“There’s no explanation for things around here,” Nesby says. “There’s just no explanation.”

Oh yes, there is.

But Donald Sterling wasn’t sitting in his usual midcourt seat Tuesday.

Somebody should have checked underneath that bag.