Clippers Have Some Revelry

Beating the Clippers might be “old hat” to Kobe Bryant, as Bryant noted earlier in the season, but the injured Bryant was unavailable to play Wednesday night.

When he’s not involved, the Clippers probably are better than the Lakers, as Clipper guard Marko Jaric had suggested in a pregame boast and Jaric and his teammates showed in a 105-89 victory in front of 20,127 at Staples Center.

The Lakers, winners of two earlier meetings, were going for a hat trick, but the Clippers, led by big men Elton Brand and Chris Kaman, outscored them for only the 20th time in 98 games since the teams have both called Los Angeles home.

“That was our plan: to just pound it inside,” Clipper guard Rick Brunson said. “We just felt like we’ve got better big men than they have.”

Brand, who didn’t play in a December loss to the Lakers, scored 28 points and took 14 rebounds for his eighth consecutive double-double.

Kaman, limited to six minutes in the December game because he had undergone an emergency appendectomy days earlier, missed eight of 14 shots but scored 14 points and produced career highs of 16 rebounds and five blocked shots.

“Although he missed a couple easy shots,” Brunson said, “it wears and tears on those guys when you keep banging and banging, so he did a good job.”

Bobby Simmons made eight of 10 shots and scored 21 points. Corey Maggette, returning to the lineup in a reserve role after sitting out two games because of a sore left foot, scored 20 points in 25 minutes, making seven of 14 shots. Jaric matched a season high with 11 assists in 24 minutes.

“I didn’t think very much of that,” Laker Coach Rudy Tomjanovich said of his team’s effort, which included 41.8% shooting and a 12-rebound deficit on the boards. “It was a pounding. Not real happy with our response.”

Nobody had a rougher time than former Clipper Lamar Odom, who fouled out after scoring eight points and missing seven of 10 shots in 23 minutes. Shortly after he fouled out, he was ejected when he picked up his second technical from the bench.

“I watched the game with you guys,” Odom told reporters after losing to the Clippers for the first time in five games since he left the team 17 months ago. “I don’t fight. I’m a finesse player. I don’t understand why I’m picking up cheap ones.”

Chucky Atkins led the Lakers with 17 points, but he missed 10 of 16 shots. Caron Butler scored 16, reserve Brian Cook 14 on six-of-10 shooting.

In the teams’ first two meetings of the Lakers’ post-Shaquille O’Neal era, the Lakers rolled through the Clippers in November, 103-89, Bryant noting that victories over the Clippers were “old hat” to him.

The Lakers won again in December, 89-87, when Brand was serving a one-game NBA suspension and Maggette’s last-second shot fell off the rim.

For about a month after that, those two Laker victories were all that separated the teams in the Pacific Division standings. The Lakers, who have now lost two in a row, subsequently widened the gap on the slumping Clippers, but that did little to alter the belief among the Clippers that they were a better team.

Jaric gave voice to those feelings Tuesday when he said of the Lakers, “Right now, I don’t think that they are a better team than we are. Obviously, they have a lot of talent; they play good basketball. But I still believe that we are a better team and we’re going to show that sooner or later.”

Rhetoric aside, there was no denying the importance of the game to the Clippers, who are trying to stay in the playoff race with several regulars sidelined.

“Of course it’s a big game for us,” Dunleavy said before the game, “because they’re directly ahead of us in the standings.

“We don’t care that they don’t have Kobe. We don’t care who they have. They could put Rudy [Tomjanovich] out there. We’re going to try to win.”

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Their Kind of Town

Even with the Clippers’ victory Wednesday, the Lakers have a 33-6 edge the last 10 seasons:

*--* SEASON HOME ROAD TOTAL 1995-96 2-0 2-0 4-0 1996-97 1-1 1-1 2-2 1997-98 2-0 2-0 4-0 1998-99 2-0 2-0 4-0 1999-00 2-0 2-0 4-0 2000-01 1-1 2-0 3-1 2001-02 2-0 1-1 3-1 2002-03 2-0 2-0 4-0 2003-04 2-0 1-1 3-1 2004-05 1-0 1-1 2-1*

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*Lakers, Clippers meet one more time this year. Before both teams moved to Staples Center for the 1999-2000 season, Lakers played home games at the Forum and the Clippers played at the Sports Arena.