Clippers Have Message for the Lakers, 118-95

By TIM BROWN

Jan. 8, 2001 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Only Eric Piatkowski, seven years a Clipper, raised his arms.

The rest of the town celebrated a Clipper victory by clearing Staples Center long before the last horn, by booing the Lakers in the fourth quarter, by kicking a purple chair on the way out.

Piatkowski, though, rejoiced, and it might just as well have been the only Clipper still around from their last victory. At the end of 16 consecutive defeats in a laughably lopsided intracity series, the Clippers beat the Lakers, 118-95, Sunday night before a sellout crowd of 18,997.

Lamar Odom, whose uneven play in the last meeting probably cost the Clippers a chance to end the losing streak a game earlier, scored 29 points. Six other Clippers scored in double figures, including Cherokee Parks (13) and Earl Boykins (11), who came off the bench and wrecked the Laker defense, such as it was.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Clipper Coach Alvin Gentry said. “It’s a great win. Not because we’re here in the same town, but because they’re the world champions.”

And very soon they’ll start playing like it.

“We didn’t play with an urgency, which is embarrassing from our standpoint,” Laker forward Rick Fox said. “We didn’t play with a high enough respect for them.”

The Lakers played a passionless game, with expressions of early January, Game 34, The Season After, See You in April, in their faces.

As a result, the Clippers ended one of the enduring losing streaks in Los Angeles history. Still on the losing side: L.A., vs. the San Andreas Fault; and L.A., vs. air quality. But Clippers, vs. the Lakers, that’s over, after almost four years, and after a lot of jokes at the expense of L.A.’s basketball stepchild.

“They got us good tonight,” Laker Coach Phil Jackson said. “They outplayed us in nearly every aspect of the game.”

It crashed down on the Lakers in the shadows of those banners that hang so forebodingly over the shoulders of the No. 3 tenant, and of the jerseys of West and Johnson and Abdul-Jabbar and Baylor.

The Clippers won with an Urkel-sized point guard and a center with a body painted to look like the side of a 1977 Econoline. Boykins, at 5 feet 5, came off injured reserve and when he played the crowd chuckled nervously, as if they were at the carnival and unsure what was the show and what was just sad.

But Boykins drove the Clipper offense around the Laker guards, around a languid Laker defense, and somehow got the basketball into the hands of open teammates, or into the basket.

“I don’t know if we earned respect,” Boykins said. “I don’t worry about what they think about us. It doesn’t matter if they respect us in the big picture.”

Some do. Some don’t.

“We’re more embarrassed,” Shaquille O’Neal said, “than bothered by it.”

Parks made five of eight shots and took six rebounds in 22 minutes, while the Laker offense stayed primarily with O’Neal (33 points, six rebounds) and Kobe Bryant (27 points, 10 of 24 from the floor). O’Neal fouled out of his third consecutive game, which only proved to Jackson that “referees read the papers, and understand them.”

So Jackson huffed and called timeouts in the fourth quarter, when Odom went so hard to the basket and O’Neal had to duck out of the way, or else risk fouling out before the game was decided. The Clippers outscored the Lakers, 34-26, in a frantic third quarter, and 64-48 in the second half.

The Lakers came within eight points halfway through the fourth quarter, which had at least one Laker thinking, “same old Clippers,” but the collapse never came. Odom kept scoring and Corey Maggette had a late statement dunk that brought the crowd to its feet--so it could dash, disgruntled, from the arena. The Lakers missed 16 of 19 three-point attempts, so there wasn’t any comeback waiting from the arc.

With 30 seconds left in the third quarter, with the deficit 16 points, Robert Horry became so disgusted with the Lakers’ inability to inbound a ball that he slammed it down.

Fifteen seconds later, Bryant squirmed at a free throw that would not drop. He knew they’d all count, that a few points might make a difference.

This will have to be viewed as a Laker loss, rather than a Clipper victory, unfortunately for the Clippers. Gentry said he would take that.

“All this stuff about having a rivalry isn’t true,” he said. “It can’t be until we start to win games.”

The Lakers don’t play again until Friday. Therefore, they have four days to soak in their 11th defeat, and their fifth in 18 home games. They lost five regular-season games at this arena last year.

Jackson didn’t see it coming. Sixteen consecutive wins, he said, did not turn the odds against the Lakers.

“I never think about that stuff,” Jackson said before the game. “You know it’s going to happen. I just don’t think about that. It’s not that so much as how the stars are aligned, more than likely. The astrological influence on a game. Where the moon is in its phase. Those are things that really count.”

He smiled. It would be his last for a while.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Yearbook

Comparing how the Lakers fared against Clippers last season with this season:

1999-2000

Dec. 14, W 95-69

Jan. 4, W 122-98

Jan. 5, W 118-101

March 6, W 123-103

Laker avg. 114.5

Clipper avg. 92.8

2000-01