Again, No Wind for Clipper Sails

Win one, lose two.

For the Clippers, who ended their 20th season in Los Angeles on Wednesday night with a 118-87 loss to the Seattle SuperSonics at Staples Center, the pattern has been set for two mostly unremarkable decades.

While coaches come and go and players shuffle in and out, three constants remain: Owner Donald Sterling rules the operation, General Manager Elgin Baylor makes the lottery picks every June, and the Clippers lose two of every three games.

This season was no different, except that management pulled the plug on it earlier than usual. Choosing to maintain their salary-cap flexibility, the Clippers sat on their assets after last summer’s mass exodus of free agents and their inability to sign point guard Gilbert Arenas to fill their most pressing need.

If their roster was full of holes -- no penetrating point guard, no dependable outside shooters, etc. -- so be it. They’d live with it for a season and, if the planets were aligned this summer, add somebody like, say, Kobe Bryant.

In other words, wait till next year, another Clipper staple.

“We made a decision early on to forgo making our team better via trades during the season so that we could try to hit the home run in the free-agent process,” Coach Mike Dunleavy said this week. “We wanted to have the money this summer for guys that might be available via a free-agent signing or a trade....

“We chose to play with this hand. We understood that it would be a tough year from the standpoint of wins and losses if we sat on our money.”

But sit they did.

Of course, none of this was incorporated into the marketing plan. Nor were ticket refunds offered or, to this point, prices stabilized through next season, a reward for fan patience.

A 14-16 start raised expectations, which had started lower than usual after the departures last summer of Lamar Odom, Michael Olowokandi, Andre Miller and longtime sharpshooter Eric Piatkowski.

Putting on a brave face, Clipper players early on adopted a “less is more” attitude. And, though overmatched in most games and especially later in the season when a slew of injuries took its toll, they rarely were outworked.

Dunleavy loved their competitiveness, if not their smarts, especially in late-game situations that demanded more prudent decision-making.

Their core, at least, is solid. Elton Brand provided his usual 20 points and 10 rebounds, maintaining his career averages. Corey Maggette and Quentin Richardson, full-time starters for the first time, enjoyed breakout seasons, with Brand emerging as the No. 2 scoring trio in the NBA behind Kevin Garnett, Latrell Sprewell and Sam Cassell of the Minnesota Timberwolves. Chris Kaman and Chris Wilcox showed promise and Bobby Simmons, cast off by the Washington Wizards, was a find: the Clippers’ most versatile and dependable reserve.

But as the schedule grew more demanding and injuries mounted, exposing their lack of depth and other deficiencies, the Clippers reverted to form.

Less, it turned out, was less, or not much better.

They’d replaced starters with journeymen. They lost their last nine home games and 14 of their last 15 overall, finishing with a 28-54 record, one game better than last season, which was considered a disaster. They finished last in the West, 15 games out of the last playoff spot.

A modest goal had been to play meaningful games in March, but talk of making a playoff push died shortly after the All-Star break in February. And March, again, was left for playing out the season.

On the plus side, Brand and Maggette are signed through five more seasons after inking multimillion-dollar deals last summer and Richardson, due to become a restricted free agent July 1, wants to stay. They’re young and athletic.

And they’ve got money to maneuver under the salary cap.

Whether they’ll make a playoff run next season, or even reach .500 for the first time in 12 years, will depend on what they do this summer.

Sterling, reversing form, made long-term commitments last summer to Brand and Maggette, shelling out $124 million in matching offers from other teams.

Whether he’s willing to commit as heavily this summer is anybody’s guess -- he doesn’t grant interviews -- but Baylor and Dunleavy are confident that the Clippers will be active in the free-agent market, and that free agents will want to sign on.

“Obviously, I’m going to be disappointed if we can’t get people to come here and play because I think it’s going to be a really good situation,” said the coach, who last summer signed a four-year, $10-million contract with the promise that the roster would be upgraded. “Part of it, of course, is always going to be money. We’re attractive because we have money.

“But we’re attractive because we’re L.A. too -- a great city, with great fans, a great building -- and people see that we have a good nucleus signed.”

If nothing else, the Clippers will add another top-10 draft pick, their 17th since the move from San Diego before the 1984-85 season.

Once again, it would seem, their best seasons are ahead of them.