Keeping It Real

By Mark Heisler

May 24, 2006 12 AM PT

PHOENIX —

Somewhere men are laughing

And little children shout;

But there is no joy in Mudville ...

“Casey at the Bat”

Ernest Lawrence Thayer

PHOENIX -- Was it a dream?

Even after Mighty Casey struck out, Mudville was a happy place compared with the mud hut where hope went to die for Clipper Nation.

Of course, anything that appears so suddenly out of the mist can go right back into the mist, but for the moment, the Clippers are real.

“I thought they’d be good but not this good, to be honest with you, with Sam [Cassell] and [Cuttino] Mobley and kind of new people, but halfway through [the season], you knew they were real and they were going to be tough,” Suns Coach Mike D’Antoni said after Monday’s Game 7 wipeout.

“They fought us all the way. I mean, obviously, we had a nice shooting night, but there’s nothing that separates us.”

This season represented all the things that went right amid the pratfalls -- owner Donald T. Sterling’s surprise move to Staples Center (if the Lakers could get a new home for free, why not them?) and the young players General Manager Elgin Baylor acquired so even after all the misadventures and jailbreaks, there was still a good talent base.

Mike Dunleavy arrived at a perfect time in the spring of 2003 with enough players and the franchise so profitable that Sterling could consider putting up hundreds of millions of dollars.

Soft-spoken in public, Dunleavy is actually as brash as his alter ego, Cassell. When Dunleavy was hired, Sterling might not have been able to pick him out of a lineup, but a few days later in The Donald’s Beverly Hills office, he heard the bravado -- “I told him, ‘I’m going to make you money,’ ” Dunleavy says -- and flipped for his new coach.

After that, it was just like being in the NBA. Sterling, who was known to question their direction at a skeptical remark from a friend or a valet parking attendant, didn’t even waver in Dunleavy’s first two seasons when they went 28-54 and 37-45.

Of course, as Dunleavy’s restlessness suggested this season when they leveled off after their 14-5 start, it was time to show this worked.

Now as far as Clipper tradition goes, they’re off the map, like Columbus sailing toward the New World.

Until this spring, the Clippers were defined by their tradition. If they tried to forget it, they learned it anew as every new media outlet that showed up did the obligatory former-laughingstock angle. (Some of us were shameless and did it daily.)

Pained Clippers officials asked each other, “What’s that got to do with today?”

Their past made them a Cinderella story, but that has a chance to be over. With normal progress and a little luck, they can journey into an entire New Universe.

“The first thing that is very, very positive for us, we can improve by doing nothing,” Dunleavy said. “We’ve got guys here that are young enough that they’re just going to get better. They can take us to another level on that alone.”

The Clipper Retrospective days are over. Now they’ll be judged by the standards of a winning team. They don’t have to pull any rabbits out of hats or squint at the future until it starts to look promising, but they do have to do something.

In the NBA, you’re either coming or going. Deferring big-money decisions, as they always have, counts as going.

Happily for them, they’re not only profitable but cost-efficient, with the league’s fifth lowest payroll. With Cassell signaling he’d take $5 million a season and Vlade Radmanovic looking as if he’ll be OK with the veteran’s exception of $5.5 million, they can give Chris Kaman an extension that doesn’t kick in until 2007-08 and next season’s payroll would go up only $4 million.

Throw in an extension at $6 million for Dunleavy, who makes $2.5 million, and their total cost goes up $7.5 million ... about what they just made from six playoff dates.

Of course, if no deal gets done and they bring Dunleavy back on their team option, alarm bells will go off in the front office of every team, such as the 76ers and Warriors, that just decided to give its coach one more chance.

Not bringing back Cassell, who says he wants only a two-year deal, would be like playing, “Turn Out the Lights, the Party’s Over.”

Failing to extend Kaman’s contract would suggest big-money commitments that are routine to 29 other teams are still agonizing for the Clippers.

Failing to bring back Radmanovic, another no-brainer anywhere else, would suggest that with the Clippers, you still never know.

By the way, Clippers fans, get ready for another new feature popular with winning teams:

TICKET PRICE INCREASES!

It’s not as if the Clippers are a guaranteed success. Kaman is still like a seven-foot puppy dog, apt to do anything. Mobley, a career 38% three-point shooter, dropped to 34% this season.

Corey Maggette, the gamer who has left pieces of himself in arenas throughout the league, might no longer fit. A terrific young man off the floor, he’s a force unto himself on it, which doesn’t work with Elton Brand going to a new level and a more structured system that pounds the ball inside.

Maggette’s high-energy style would make him sixth man of the year the day he says he’ll do it. Although he held still for it this spring, he has never been shy about saying he wants to start.

“I’m just letting my agent [Rob Pelinka] handle it, that’s not for me to do,” Maggette said. “ ... The biggest thing now is to be professional about it.”

The oft-asked question of whether this will always be a Laker town is irrelevant. Whatever the town is, it’s big enough for the Clippers, who just averaged an 8.4 rating in this market for their TNT games this round compared to the Lakers’ 7.3 in the first round. It’s just sports and winning is the great leveler.

Cassell ended his season as he started it, talking about the Clippers’ future and pleading to be part of it.

“I’ve been around Mike one year,” Cassell said. “He knows how to win. He’s done it before, so now he’s back at that level where he’s been. I know him and he’s not going back. He’ll leave before he has to go back....

“If management steps up, which they say they will ... “

Management has said that before, but the Clippers were a cult then. However long it lasts, they’re a nation now.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Mike Dunleavy

* Position: Coach

* Age: 52

* Why the Clippers would miss him: Dunleavy, a favorite of Donald Sterling, gets respect from veterans. A new coach would mean a lack of stability.

Sam Cassell

* Position: Point guard

* Age: 36

* Why the Clippers would miss him: Cassell was a key addition as the team reached the next level and is a link to the Shaun Livingston era.

Vladimir Radmanovic