Bingo! They Got What They Wanted

Boniface Ndong makes a jumper, his second of the game, and I hear screaming.

You ding-Ndong! You pick tonight to score as many baskets as you’ve scored in the last dozen games combined? .

James Singleton sinks a three-point basket, his fifth of the game, and I hear anger.

Big Shame James! That’s as many three-pointers as you have made all season!

The Clippers creep within three points of the Memphis Grizzlies in the final moments of Tuesday’s game and, from deep within my easy chair, I hear the strangest of chants.

Let’s Go Griz-zlies.

I look around and realize, holy Zeljko, it’s me.

Having spent the last 20 years cheering for the Clippers to win, I am now rooting for them to lose.

And on the one night in their sorry history where a loss would be a good thing, it only figures that the Clippers are pushing for a win.

The Grizzlies have the ball with 29 seconds remaining, holding a three-point lead -- let them score! let them score! -- when it finally happens.

The Clippers stop playing. No timeouts, no strategy, they simply stop and let the Grizzlies pass the ball about a dozen times before it finally lands in the hands of Mike Miller, who sinks an uncontested three-pointer to clinch it.

With apologies to Ralph Lawler ... Bingo!

The Clippers lose, 101-95, but, on the strangest night in franchise history, Clipper fans everywhere win.

Because of the NBA’s misguided postseason seeding system, the Clippers’ first-round playoff opponent just went from guns to roses, from arsenic to lace, from fire to Wild Cherry Icee.

“It is what it is,” Elton Brand told reporters Tuesday night.

Translated: It’s really, really dumb, and the Clippers were just smart enough to take advantage of it.

By winning, the fifth-place clinching Grizzlies will open the playoffs against the fourth-seeded Dallas Mavericks, who are the second-best team in the West.

That series starts in Dallas. The Grizzlies have no shot.

By losing, the sixth-place clinching Clippers will open against the third-seeded Denver Nuggets, who are only the sixth- or seventh-best team in the West.

That series starts in Los Angeles. The Clippers should win.

Since the NBA went to a 16-team playoff system two decades ago, 66% of the playoff teams with home-court advantage win the series.

And when the Clippers win, because of equally dunderheaded bracketing, they will play the winner of the series between Phoenix and the Lakers or Sacramento, another matchup they can win.

Rarely in NBA history has one night’s loss possibly bought a team another month of basketball, but that’s what happened Tuesday.

Tank you very much. Yes, I’m not ashamed to say I cheered for this loss.

I cheered when they benched Sam Cassell and Chris Kaman while giving Vin Baker his first NBA start in more than two years.

I cheered when they missed nine of their first 11 shots.

I cheered when they scored only 33 points at halftime and trailed by 18.

But then, the Clippers still being the Clippers, they almost messed it up.

Walter McCarty? Daniel Ewing? Singleton? The work ethic instilled by Mike Dunleavy nearly came back to haunt his team, the reserves flying and diving and nearly exposing the Grizzlies while I covered my eyes.

But in the end, by resting two starters and playing Elton Brand only 22 minutes, the Clippers gave themselves their best chance at playoff success.

You should not be embarrassed to applaud them for it.

Some might say that by trying not to win, the Clippers were hurting the integrity of the game.

I say they are just playing by the rules.

When the Indianapolis Colts rested their starters at the end of last season, nobody accused them of lacking ethic. Every mid-September clinching baseball team sporadically rests its best players during the final two weeks of the season, and do fans call them spineless?

Tuesday was no different.

The Clippers’ first loyalty is not to some unwritten code, but to the clearest path to a championship, and this was it.

The problem is that, when the NBA went to a three-division-per-conference format two years ago, it wrongly decided that the division champions would be the top three-seeded teams, even if they weren’t the three best teams in the conference. While these three champions would be seeded at the top, it would not guarantee them home-court advantage, another blunder.

An NBA spokesman said Tuesday that the league would revisit the rules in June, which means they will change them.

But, for now, the Clippers simply capitalized on them.

“I’m very proud of this team and their professionalism,” said Coach Mike Fratello of his Grizzlies. “They did what you’re supposed to do -- win games.”

In this case, pride goeth before the fall.

And the losing, winning Clippers are still standing strong.

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