The Hippest of Hops--the Kiddie Clippers

Darius Miles has blings and bunnies, tatts and ‘rows.

One of the few places where those words would be met with appreciative nods instead of quizzical stares is the locker room of the Los Angeles Clippers, who enter the season as one of the youngest teams in NBA history.

Among the Kiddie Clippers are Miles, 19, Corey Maggette, 20, Lamar Odom, 20, Keyon Dooling, 20, and Quentin Richardson, 20.

“We’ve got a high school kid and three juniors,” coach Alvin Gentry said. “We’d be the second youngest team in the Big Ten.”

No player in the NBA is younger than Miles, who entered the league straight out of East St. Louis (Ill.) High School and was chosen third overall in the draft--the highest any high school player has been picked. He turned 19 on Oct. 9.

Being chosen so high has already earned Miles a spot on the cover of Sports Illustrated with Kevin Garnett, the player Miles patterns his game after. Miles took a private jet to the photo shoot in Minneapolis, then zipped off in luxury to Denver for an exhibition game.

“The plane was cool, little plane,” said the soft-spoken but statistically conscious Miles, who proudly reeled off his preseason averages in points, steals and blocked shots. (Going into the weekend, those numbers were 12.9, 1.3 and 2.0, respectively.)

Miles is a skinny kid with little muscle on his 6-foot-9 frame. Like many of the younger players who have entered the NBA over the past few seasons, he displays the trappings and trimmings of the NBA lifestyle--blings (heavy diamond-encrusted jewelry that makes a “bling-bling” sound), bunnies (leaping ability), ‘rows (his hair styled in cornrows) and tatts (tattoos on his arms).

Miles has plenty of game, too, with great athleticism, a deft touch around the basket and an exciting combination of reckless abandon and giddy-up. Topping off the whole package is a headband, this season’s accessory of choice among NBA players. (Even 39-year-old Pacer Sam Perkins is wearing one.)

The Clippers are practically Team Headband, with Miles, Odom, Richardson, Dooling and Jeff McInnis looking like a Slick Watts tribute club. Watts wore a headband when he played for Seattle in the late 1970s. Since then, Cliff Robinson has been one of the few players to wear one.

“Accessories are something you’re used to seeing on the playground,” Odom said, “and old fashions have a way of coming back.”

So do old reputations, and the Clippers have one--a bad one--that has been growing since Miles was in diapers.

The franchise has long been the laughingstock of the league for its penchant for losing games and history of losing players.

The two top scorers from last season, Maurice Taylor and Derek Anderson, left as free agents over the summer. A year earlier, Lamond Murray found it more palatable to play in Cleveland, while Lorenzen Wright forced a trade to Atlanta.

Earlier in the 1990s, Danny Manning, Mark Jackson, Dominique Wilkins, Isaac Austin and others came and went, with the team getting nothing in return. Danny Ferry was so revolted by the idea that he went to Europe and stayed there until the Clippers traded him.

Now, the franchise is making yet another new start.

“The objective is to not talk about what happened over the last 10 years. We will be judged from this day forward,” Gentry said after the Clippers beat the Indiana Pacers at Conseco Fieldhouse, opening up a 27-point lead after three quarters.

“They came out laughing at us. We went up 26 on them and they shut up,” said Miles, who said “shutting people up” has been the most fulfilling part of his brief NBA career.

The Clippers won four of their first six exhibition games, but no one in the locker room is under the delusion that they’ll contend for a playoff spot. In the loaded Western Conference, the Clippers appear too inexperienced to win.

“In this league, experience is everything. What we lack in experience we’ll try to make up in hustle,” said Gentry, who was fired as coach of the Detroit Pistons last season after 58 games. He takes over for Jim Todd, who was the interim replacement for Chris Ford last season.

After an off-season overhaul, the roster includes only five players who were with the team throughout last season--Eric Piatkowski, Tyrone Nesby, Michael Olowokandi, Brian Skinner and Odom. A trade with Orlando netted Dooling, Maggette and Derek Strong, and a trade with Dallas brought Rooks.

Odom, coming off a strong rookie season that included three triple-doubles and a career-high of 33 points, shares mentoring duties with Maggette.

Maggette spent last season with the Magic as a little-used rookie but said he learned a lot by paying attention from the bench.

The advice Maggette gave Miles, Dooling and Richardson on dealing with the referees:

“Don’t say anything, that’s the biggest thing. Never confront a ref as a rookie, because they’ll make your life tough. You can approach them politely, but you can’t approach them the first time they whistle you because they’ll think it’s an insult.”

Maggette has also told the rookies to avoid too much nightlife, while Gentry has brought up the stabbing of Celtics forward Paul Pierce as an example of what can happen. Pierce was stabbed 10 times in a nightclub fight in Boston.

“In certain situations you have to back away, and it says nothing about your manhood,” Gentry said. “But I don’t think they’re the type of guys that will be running the streets anyway.”

Part of the task of turning the youngsters into NBA-caliber players falls to assistant coach Dennis Johnson, who was bemused last Sunday by Miles’ attention span.

As Johnson worked with Miles in a pregame shooting drill, Miles ran over to the stands and say hello to a friend. Miles had been shooting poorly during the drill, missing three of every four shots he took from the college 3-point line.

After a minute with his buddy, Miles started signing autographs.

“Whenever you’re ready, Darius,” Johnson called to him sarcastically.

Three minutes into an exhibition game with the Pacers later that afternoon, Miles went down hard in a collision with Jermaine O’Neal and hobbled off the court holding his knee. But by the third quarter, Miles’ knee was healthy enough to allow him to dunk over the 7-footer.

Was it the best dunk of his brief NBA career?

“That’s for the fans to say and for me to find out,” Miles said.

At 31, Rooks is the second oldest member of the Clippers behind Strong, 32. Those two old fogies skew the Clippers’ average age to 24.1 on what is expected to be their opening-night roster. The Chicago Bulls, with seven rookies and no player older than 28, will have an average age of 22.8.

Like Olowokandi and Piatkowski, who have experienced some of the darkest days in Clipperland, Rooks seems to be getting a kick out of the team’s youthfulness.

“I was in Minnesota when Garnett came out and in Los Angeles when Kobe Bryant came out,” said Rooks, somewhat of an expert on the phenomenon of high school players adapting to NBA life. “And these guys are coming out with enormous talent.”

As he spoke, Miles was getting dressed, adjusting his blings and basking in his teammates’ praise for his dunk over O’Neal. Six months ago, Miles was eating his lunches in a high school cafeteria.

“I’m not old, but the fact is that I’m 10 years older than these guys and there is a considerable gap,” Rooks said. “They’ve got lots of energy.”