Portland Seems to Be Hot Favorite

It’s not fair to compare a team that is perpetually light years away from respectability to a team that was 12 minutes away from the NBA finals. So we won’t. The only reason the Clippers are in the same paragraph as the Portland Trail Blazers is they both played in an exhibition game at Staples Center last night. And for a change, they both have their own reasons to look forward to this season.

The Clippers actually have some talent. And that talent can’t go anywhere any time soon, thanks to the rookie scale contracts. So the Clippers can expect their flashes of excitement this season, endure the expected growing pains, and plan for the future. What a novel concept.

“We know it’s not going to happen overnight,” said Darius Miles, the kid straight out of high school who just turned 19 last week. “It’s going to take time. I’ve got all the time in the world. I’m young.”

Miles was one of four youngsters the Clippers acquired on draft day, including Quentin Richardson, Corey Maggette, and Keyon Dooling.

“I feel it’s a different team,” Miles said. “We’re just out there having fun, really. We’re just trying to change things around so they’ll say it’s two teams in L.A.”

No doubt, the Clippers will make people notice them. Making the playoffs could be another matter.

Not only are they the “other” team in L.A., but they’re just another good team in a Western Conference that’s loaded with great ones.

The best three teams in the conference, the Lakers, Trail Blazers and San Antonio Spurs, each got better over the summer. So did the Seattle SuperSonics, another playoff team from last year. The Phoenix Suns are tough. If the erratic Sacramento Kings can play the way they did in Games 3 and 4 against the Lakers, they’ll be seeded higher and won’t have to face them in the first round again.

It looks as if the only playoff spot from last season that’s up for grabs this year is Minnesota’s. And the Dallas Mavericks and Houston Rockets, to name just two teams, are more ready to take it than the Clippers.

Is Portland ready to take the next step toward a championship?

The Trail Blazers sure took every measure in the off-season, adding Shawn Kemp and Dale Davis to an already-deep roster that included Rasheed Wallace, Scottie Pippen, Steve Smith, Arvydas Sabonis, Damon Stoudamire, Bonzi Wells and Greg Anthony.

“You look at it, we’re so interchangeable now,” Steve Smith said. “You can go Sheed, Dale, Shawn Kemp. You can go Sabonis. You can go Damon, Stacey [Augmon] . . . Bonzi. You can go me, Bonzi, Pip. You can go me, Pip, Rasheed, Dale, Kemp. You can go, Sabas [Sabonis], Kemp, Dale, Rasheed and me, Pip. You pick it.”

Actually, it’s Coach Mike Dunleavy’s job to pick it.

“It’s not as easy to manage,” Dunleavy said. “Because in some ways what happens is you’re putting guys in unusual roles for them, ones where they’re coming off the bench, as opposed to playing big minutes and getting their rhythm. It takes a special player to be able to come in and produce in shorter spurts.’

Which is why Shaquille O’Neal thinks the Trail Blazers will have some problems.

“Write this down: Too much heat is not good,” O’Neal said. “If you don’t believe me, wear a black corduroy suit in the middle of Phoenix during the summer. Too much heat ain’t good. They’ve got a lot of heat on that team. A lot of heat.”

It will be a little tough the first few weeks of the season, while Sabonis is recovering from knee surgery. Even when he’s back, the Trail Blazers think their veteran experience will mitigate the battle for minutes.

“These are guys that are in the latter part of their careers, so I don’t see that being a problem,” Pippen said.

The Portland roster has eight players who were born in the 1960s.

(The Clippers, on the other hand, have two--and three who were born in the 1980s.)

There’s nothing like veterans, especially when May and June roll around.

Now, have the Trail Blazers learned from their collapse in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals, when they let a 15-point lead in the fourth quarter evaporate? Can they ever shake that memory?

“It’ll always be something we have flashbacks of,” Pippen said. “We were on the verge, almost, of getting to the NBA Finals. We couldn’t have been in a better position in the fourth quarter. We didn’t hold on to it. We didn’t do that extra little to get us over.”

They have extra ammunition on the frontline now. They even have six more fouls to use on O’Neal, in the form of Will Perdue.

Phil Jackson feels the Trail Blazers are constructed specifically to beat the Lakers. They’ll be battling throughout the season for supremacy in the Pacific Division, which should basically decide the Western Conference and therefore the NBA championship. (Now that Miami’s Alonzo Mourning will miss the entire season because of a kidney ailment, who even cares about who will come out of the East?).

They might posture a little bit now, such as Shaq’s claim that he isn’t concerned about the Trail Blazers.

“There’s your house and there’s the next-door neighbor’s house,” O’Neal said. “You don’t give a . . . what the next-door neighbor does with his garden. You just worry about your garden.

“My garden’s in order.”

But the Lakers and Trail Blazers won’t be able to stop themselves from peeking over the fence.

“They’ve got some good additions,” Steve Smith said. “I think we’ve got some good additions too, though.”

So do the Clippers. But for now they’re just seeds.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: ja.adande@latimes.com

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