Clippers Enjoy Marquee for a Night

Gee, just what everyone around here always wanted, a real intracity rivalry.

Actually, most local fans liked it the way it was when the Lakers were stringing titles together and the Clippers were doing whatever they were doing.

If only for the moment, things are different. The Clippers have lost six free agents from last season. The Lakers, however, have lost two Hall of Famers from the start of the season.

Then there’s the Kobe Bryant angle. If you want to look at it that way -- as did the fan who got on the scoreboard video screen holding up a red Bryant No. 8 Clipper jersey -- this was a game between Kobe’s present and, perhaps, future employers.

As basketball goes, it was more like a summer league game, where people are trying to make or protect reputations. Even Clipper Coach Mike Dunleavy, having just won his most important game of the season, complained about his team’s execution down the stretch, saying he would “almost rather play real good and lose.”

Bryant was spectacular en route to his 44 points, if aggressive, to say the least, as he has been recently.

Of course, this is a new situation, with Shaquille O’Neal and Karl Malone out ... and speculation that Bryant might leave at season’s end ... possibly to become a Clipper.

All the old dynamics have changed. Coach Phil Jackson, who never hid his frustration when Bryant abandoned the offense, now accepts it almost without comment. If asked about it, Jackson defends Bryant.

“I don’t have any trouble with him on the shots he took tonight,” Jackson said after Sunday night’s game.

” ... Most everything he ran, we were playing into his hand, he was hot tonight and playing well. He only took 27 shots in the course of the ball game and he had a flurry where sometimes he took two or three shots on forays to the basket ...

“I thought he wasn’t overindulgent shooting tonight.”

This no longer looks like the Bryant, whose game seemed to be smoothing out, whose assists rose annually to a career-high 5.9 a game last season. This looks more like young Kobe before Jackson arrived in 1999, who replied to complaints from teammates by going out and defiantly firing at will.

Happily for the Lakers, they started 18-3, so they have the league’s second-best record, even if it was a lot bigger before they started on their 3-6 slide, and their reputation.

Friday in Seattle, SuperSonic Coach Nate McMillan noted he hadn’t “seen a team assembled like this since I’ve been involved in the NBA,” and compared Payton’s current style to the way he used to play on All-Star teams, which is, in effect, what the Lakers’ starting lineup resembles when they’re at full strength.

Even at half-strength, they’re imposing enough.

“They’ve got two Hall of Famers instead of four now,” said Dunleavy before the game, resisting the urge to feel sorry for them. “That still means they’re really good instead of great.”

This was Dunleavy’s debut in this series as a Clipper coach. He also participated as Laker coach in the early ‘90s, when that entailed an entirely different set of problems.

Then, he was under the gun. Now he coaches the local afterthought,

“Obviously, they do so much more from an advertising standpoint and where they get played on the radio, etc, etc.,” said Dunleavy.

“But for me, I don’t pay that much attention to it. My mind-set is, I know who they are, we respect who they are, they’re a terrific team ...

“At the end, they’re gonna be there, so really it’s a test for us. It’s a test of how we’re growing, how we play against them.”

Whatever the Lakers are at the moment, the Clippers played them even all night. It was the Clippers who took an eight-point lead in the fourth quarter and the Lakers who had to rally.

At the end, it was Elton Brand blocking Derek Fisher’s shot and Keyon Dooling getting Gary Payton’s from behind, even if Jackson complained about the calls and Dunleavy complained about the breakdowns that gave the Lakers any shot at all.

Nevertheless, it was the Clippers’ night. Whether they slew a giant or a pretender remains to be seen, but whoever it was, however they did it, they sure enjoyed it.