Clippers close to launching a D-League team in Ontario

The Clippers are expected announce next week that they will have their own NBA Development League team that will be called the Agua Caliente Clippers of Ontario and that the team will play at the start of the 2017-18 season, league officials who were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter said.

According to reports that an official said were accurate, Agua Caliente Casino Resort — the team’s leading partnership sponsor — has the naming rights for the Clippers’ D-League team. The announcement could come as early as Monday, one official said.

Gerald Madkins, the Clippers’ assistant general manager, will be the general manager of the D-League team, and Dee Brown, the team’s director of player programs, will be the assistant general manager in charge of day-to-day operations, the officials said. The Clippers haven’t hired a coach yet for the team.

With the Clippers having a D-League team, the NBA will now have 26 affiliates.

The D-League will become known as the NBA Gatorade League, or G-League, starting next season, one of the officials noted.

Doc Rivers, the coach and president of basketball operations for the Clippers, had lamented about his team not having a Development League team and how it stunted the growth of his rookies.

The Clippers had to send rookie Brice Johnson to Salt Lake City and rookie Diamond Stone to Utah and to San Jose to play in D-League for affiliates of other NBA teams.

When Rivers met with the media last week after the Clippers had been eliminated for the playoffs by the Utah Jazz, he talked about how “vital” it is for LA to have its own D-League team.

“It’s huge,” Rivers said. “We have to get younger players here and we have to have the ability to make them great players. And we haven’t had that ability.”

The Clippers drafted French point guard David Michineau last year in the second round, but kept him playing in Europe this season. He’ll be brought over this summer and placed on the D-League team.

The Clippers will have a mini-camp next week at the team’s practice facility in Playa Vista. They will look for players to play on their summer league team in Las Vegas in July and to play on the D-League team.

broderick.turner@latimes.com

Twitter: @BA_Turner