Clippers Have Message for the Lakers, 118-95

OK, now it’s a rivalry.

First the parade announcements: Clipper players and floats will form at 2nd and Figueroa and then proceed to Staples Center, where Gov. Gray Davis, Mayor Richard Riordan, team owner Donald T. Sterling and Clipper star Lamar Odom will make brief remarks.

Then the guys will visit the White House and appear on Jay Leno’s show. Leno will apologize for all those Clipper jokes he has done.

If things keep going this way, he’s going to be doing Laker jokes soon.

In retrospect, maybe what happened Sunday night shouldn’t have been so surprising. After all, Laker Coach Phil Jackson suggested recently that his team was playing as if it was waiting for the NBA finals.

Meanwhile, the Clippers played as if this was the NBA finals.

The last time the Clips beat the Lakers--March 14, 1997--Shaquille O’Neal was out and Elden Campbell started at center, with Corie Blount and Jerome Kersey at forward and Nick Van Exel and Eddie Jones at guard. Del Harris was the coach. Jerry West was the GM. It was still the 20th century.

Now all, except Shaq, are gone.

The last time the Clippers beat the Lakers, they started Loy Vaught, Bo Outlaw, Lorenzen Wright, Darrick Martin and Malik Sealy. Bill Fitch was the coach.

Of course, they’re all gone. This is the Clippers.

Some nights, like Friday when they slept through a desultory loss to the Hornets, it still looks the way it did. But who were those guys flying through the night Sunday?

Like, who was that 5-foot-5 smurf who kept lobbing shots in over Shaq?

His name is Earl Boykins and Sunday night, whenever he finished darting here and there, the Lakers would look as if they had been hypnotized, after which some Clipper would shoot a layup or dunk the ball up to his armpit.

“It was no big deal,” said Eric Piatkowski, the only Clipper to survive all 16 losses in a row to the Lakers. “There’s no need for guys to jump up and down like we’ve won the world championship. We can win games like this.”

How about the Laker bench, you should excuse the expression, getting outscored by the Clipper subs, 44-12?

Before the game, it was just the usual “city series” contest, with the press trooping in to ask Clipper Coach Alvin Gentry--again--if he considered this a rivalry, and Gentry answering, as he always does that, no, you couldn’t think of it that way if one team never won.

Of course, speaking for the young guys who haven’t been around long enough to be embarrassed about being Clippers or to learn how to fear Lakers, Quentin Richardson said it was a rivalry.

“We’ve only lost three times to them,” Richardson noted. “We don’t know anything about 16 or however many in a row.”

In the sad, old Clipper days, Shaq used to torch Michael Olowokandi or whomever, or at least put them on the bench with fouls. Of course, who can forget last season’s game when the Clippers charged Shaq for tickets for his friends and he scored 60 points, while a Clipper “home” crowd chanted “MVP! MVP!”

This season, Olowokandi stood up to Shaq a little--or, as he did Sunday, enough to draw two quick fouls in the first quarter.

Jackson left O’Neal in but Shaq had to protect himself and, Jackson noted later, there went the defense.

After that, it got so bad the Clippers were fighting among themselves for highlight plays. On one third-quarter fast break, Jeff McInnis came down and lobbed the ball up for Richardson, but the play was broken up by Darius Miles, who jumped for it too.

By the end of the game, McInnis was merrily exchanging insults with a courtside fan. McInnis pointed to the scoreboard. The fan pointed to the Laker banners.

Piatkowski was asked later how he felt about ending the losing streak.

“I’m just happy I don’t have to hear about it,” he said. “If we go out and get blown out by Indiana [tonight], this game won’t mean anything. And we’ve been known to do stuff like that.”

Jackson suggested the debacle was more a result of referees getting even with Shaq for his recent complaints, rather than that low-effort malaise he was talking about a week ago.

Laker fans had better hope so. It’s going to be hard to repeat giving up 118 a game.