NO ROYAL SHYNESS

Welcome to the NBA’s newest discount superstore, a place filled with pallets of hope and jumbo-size dreams.

The Clippers are now Sam’s Club.

“I was told that if I can get the Clippers to the playoffs, I’d be the king of L.A.,” said Sam Cassell, shaking his head. “I said, ‘For real? Because that’s one heck of a place to be king.’ ”

Welcome to a team that has shed a punch line and added a jab, a team beginning a season tonight with a mouthy leader who has challenged his teammates to forge a new identity that has nothing to do with an old joke.

The Clippers are now Sam’s “I Am.”

“I called a team meeting and told them, ‘I don’t care about the past, all that matters is this team, if we play hard, we have a chance, and if you don’t feel that way, then you got to get out of here, now,” Cassell explained.

Didn’t that make some of the veterans mad?

“Elton Brand, our silent assassin, he stood up right in the middle of my talk and said the same thing,” explained Cassell. “So I think everyone was cool.”

He turns 36 on Nov. 18, he’s carrying the scars of an injury-plagued exit from Minnesota, his two championship rings are a decade old.

But the bald guy with the funky swagger and rainbow jumper can still shoot, and still snarl, two things the Clippers have been missing in a point guard, and precisely the point of their preseason buzz.

The Clippers will be better this year because of Sam Cassell.

It says here they will make the playoffs this year because of Sam Cassell.

His thoughts exactly.

“This team lost a lot of games last year [13] by three points or less,” Cassell said Tuesday from the team’s practice facility, shortly before boarding a plane for tonight’s opener in Seattle. “Me being here, I’m going to cut that number in half, serious.”

He arrived from Minnesota this summer with a conditional first-round draft pick in a deal for Marko Jaric and Lionel Chalmers, and trouble signs were everywhere.

He has only one year left on his contract. He left the Timberwolves on such cool terms with General Manager Kevin McHale, he said he hung up the phone on him when informed of the trade.

But as a point guard who can get the ball to scorers Brand, Corey Maggette and now Cuttino Mobley, he is everything that Jaric was not.

He is not afraid to take the big shot, a shot that has helped his teams reach the conference finals in one-third of his dozen pro seasons.

“Everybody talks about who is going to take the last shot,” Cassell said, shrugging. “Give me the ball. I’ll take that shot.”

He’s not afraid to make an important point, loudly, even if it means scolding a younger teammate.

“There will be times when I stop practice to teach, and it’s usually something negative, and before I can get the words out of my mouth, Sam has jumped in there and said the same thing,” Coach Mike Dunleavy said.

And, unlike Clipper acquisitions who have played down to franchise expectations, he says he’s not afraid to forget the past.

“Yeah, when I was traded here, I was pessimistic, then I looked at their roster,” he said. “I realized they had some really good parts here. I thought, why can’t they win?”

Shortly after the trade, he flew here and met Dunleavy at a beachfront hotel, where the coach sealed the deal with a virtual kiss.

“He told me, ‘You can show them how it’s supposed to be done, Sam. You can take the leadership of this team,’ ” Cassell recalled.

Dunleavy said he was quoted correctly. After two years of being not only this team’s coach, but its most vocal leader, Dunleavy was happy to finally pass the mantle to a player who could do it better.

“It’s always preferable if the locker room can police itself, and Sam can help do that,” he said. “This is just a really good fit.”

There has been talk that there won’t be enough balls for all the Clipper shooters.

“Are you telling me that all we have to do to win is share the basketball?” Cassell said.

“Are you kidding me? Remember, I’m going to be the one with the basketball. And I’m going to be sharing it.”

There has been talk that Cassell will lock egos with rising star Shaun Livingston, who might have battled Cassell for the starting spot except he has been sidelined by a back injury.

“No, we’re fine, he knows where I’ve been, he understands I can make him better,” Cassell said. “Look, I’ve only got about three more years left in my career, and I don’t care anymore about numbers or statistics. I just want to win.”

There has also been concern that he might irritate one of the team’s two established stars. But Brand backed him in the meeting, and Maggette was backing him Tuesday.

“He’s the one thing we had been missing around here,” Maggette said. “He has the rings. He knows how to play. We welcome him with open arms.”

He not only knows how to play, he knows when the playing is most important.

Just ask him about the Lakers.

“They are just not the Lakers without Shaq,” he said.

But they still set the hype standard around here, they are still the Clippers’ biggest roadblock to national credibility, they are still the Clippers biggest games of the season.

The first one being ... ?

“November 18, I know the date exactly,” Cassell said. “That’s my birthday. That’s the night

that the Clippers are going to entertain the

stars.”

Good luck trying to blow out this candle.

*

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.