They Never Own Up to Real Problem

They arrive with minimal fanfare, inexperienced first-timers or veterans running out of chances, the common denominator being that they want the job so badly, they will ignore any warning and work for anything.

They have only two or three years on their contracts, but even that’s optimistic. They’re usually gone in 18 months.

They are Clipper coaches, the temps of the NBA.

The day they’re carried out feet first, the newspapers play it up as if it means something. The players can’t hide their delight. They even start playing again under the new man, whether he’s a Tough Guy Who’ll Provide the Discipline We Need, or a Players’ Coach Who Understands Us.

In either case, it doesn’t last long. The players are as depressed as the coaches, the only difference being that some of them will get another chance somewhere else as soon as their sentences, er, contracts are up.

Chris Ford wasn’t a hot candidate, but he wasn’t the biggest stiff who ever worked a sideline. He did a nice job with the Celtics, who had veterans who knew how to play.

Here, he had young guys on their way out of town. Eight of his players left after his first season.

Two of this season’s starters are unsigned free agents to be. One, Maurice Taylor, has vowed to leave and his agent, David Falk, has promised they won’t commit to any team that wants to trade for him now, hoping to keep the Clippers from getting anything for him.

Ford bore his burden manfully, but he knew what he was up against. He and the only assistant he was allowed to bring with him, Jim Todd, rented a house in the South Bay, living like college roommates while their families stayed in the East. They may have needed the action, but there was no use uprooting their loved ones and putting them in the line of fire, not with the risks being what they were, approximately 100%.

It was a situation in which only a miracle worker could have accomplished anything and that wasn’t Ford. By the end, he was like a pitcher who has been shelled, who asks the manager when he comes out to the mound, “What kept you?”

There were suggestions Ford quit on his players, but in this franchise, quitting is a leitmotif. The owner, Donald T. Sterling, quit on them all long ago. The players quit on Ford. Who did they think he was, Don Quixote?

The problem, of course, never changes, can’t be fired and has yet to acknowledge he ever did anything wrong.

Three springs ago, I interviewed Sterling in his Beverly Hills office. In the course of the session, I urged him, as I had, in the paper and in person, to hire, or invest in, a strong man and take himself out of the loop.

He replied he already had a strong man, then-coach Bill Fitch, who had just surprised everyone by taking the team into the playoffs.

This was unusual, since coaches are subordinate to general managers, but this was Sterling, so how could anything surprise you?

I noted that Fitch had only a year left on his contract and asked how a lame duck could be a strong man?

The next thing you knew, Sterling had, on his own, re-signed Fitch to a two-year, $4-million extension, which was about as much as he had paid all his other coaches put together.

Unfortunately, Sterling neglected to check with team officials, or he’d have learned that the hard-edged Fitch was all but estranged from the front office and, of course, had few friends among the players he drove so hard. Before the extension even kicked in, Fitch was back in Texas, with a $4-million 401K, being paid not to coach.

Since, Sterling has gotten even further out of the basketball business. Clipper officials hoped for a new start when they moved into Staples Center, an effort to change perceptions of them as a league joke. All they got were the abortive Taylor negotiations, with Falk demanding the max, Sterling refusing to meet with him and the Clippers failing even to counteroffer.

Thus embarrassed (yet again), with a roster capable of playing many levels above where it is now, Sterling may go back into the market for a big-money coach--and there’s one who might be free, who might say yes.

Larry Brown has stayed friendly with Sterling, years after bolting his organization. Brown, of course, has nothing against revisiting his mistakes (see: UCLA), especially when they’re located in Southern California. He summers in Malibu, near Sterling’s beach home, and they see each other socially. Brown would like to believe the problem is the people around Sterling. Of course, the people have changed over the years but nothing else has.

Brown has a fat deal in Philadelphia, but he’s up to here with Allen Iverson’s antics. With Brown, it usually doesn’t take much distress, especially by Year 3.

Brown is a miracle worker, but he’s the Movable Object, which makes him an impossible fit with Sterling’s Resistible Force. But with Brown, you get an exciting season or two, which is heady stuff for the Clippers.

But that’s a debacle for another day.

It’s unusual, even for an outgoing Clipper coach, not to express some disappointment at being axed. All Ford said was, he was happy to be going home to his family.

That makes him the lucky one, after all. Everyone else in Clipperdom has to stay.

FACES AND FIGURES

While we’re on the subject, or a fate worse than death: Jerry Stackhouse’s Detroit Piston teammates, who learned he had made the East All-Star team before he did, cold-shouldered him when he arrived before practice. “The guys were acting kind of funny,” Stackhouse said later. “I was like, ‘What did they do, trade me or something?’ Terry Mills looks up and says, ‘It’s the Clippers, but at least the weather is nice out there.’ ”

They’re on Rodman Non-Standard Time now: Dennis Rodman finally signed with the Dallas Mavericks. He’s scheduled to make his debut Wednesday against the Seattle SuperSonics, after a whirlwind effort to get in shape. “All this working out is tough,” he said after a practice session. Maverick owner Mark Cuban accepted all of Rodman’s conditions--Rodman doesn’t have to practice or attend shoot-arounds or show up on time--but wouldn’t let him attend today’s Pro Bowl in Honolulu. “I’m going to the Pro Bowl with his tickets,” Cuban said. “I told Dennis, ‘You have to be getting in shape this weekend.’ ”

He can ask Jerry Krause, basketball is easy, administration is what’s hard: Michael Jordan’s career as Washington Wizard president got off to a rocky start when he fired Coach Gar Heard; announced his friend, Rod Higgins, then a Golden State assistant, would take over; then was held up for compensation by the Warriors (in a low-class move by owner Chris Cohan) and was obliged to fall back on Darrell Walker. Also, Jordan did it by long distance--he was out of town when Heard was fired--and opened himself up to a new round of second-guessing for listening to Rod Strickland and Juwan Howard (Falk clients), and never talking to Heard, who had been hired by the Abe Pollin administration, specifically to crack the whip. “I didn’t expect to be one of his [Jordan’s] guys, especially with the David Falk factor,” Heard said. “Rod and Juwan, I’m sure they didn’t have anything good to say.” Replied Strickland, “The bottom line is, maybe he just couldn’t coach.”

Sacramento marvel/spectacle Jason Williams: “I just try to go out and have fun. That old-school stuff, five passes before you shoot? I ain’t with all that.” . . . Cleveland’s Shawn Kemp, on missing the All-Star game after making the last six and starting the last five: “It had to end somewhere. I’m at a point in my career where I just want to win.” Actually, he looks as if he’s at a point in his career where he just wants to eat.

Milwaukee Coach George Karl, declining to comment on the SuperSonics, his former employers, in last week’s return to Seattle: “Maybe I’m growing up. God, I hope not.” . . . Milwaukee General Manager Ernie Grunfeld, after Tim Thomas’ last-second shot beat the SuperSonics: “The script would have been better only if George had taken that shot.”