Clippers’ Hopes Continue to Build

It’s quiet in Clipperdom too.

It’s not like the uneasy silence that prevails among the Lakers, which feels like the calm before the storm. Nor is it like the Clippers’ old days, when their players waited for reporters to leave the dressing room so they could go over their escape plans.

This is more like the morning after, when the party’s over and you wake up and find all your furniture in the swimming pool.

Last season’s free agents have fled, en masse, with eight trying to get out of here and all but Elton Brand and Corey Maggette making it.

Local fans are fleeing by the thousands, and more thousands than are reflected in the attendance, listed at 15,303 a game, which is why the newspapers are back to noting it’s an “announced” 15,303.

The euphoria that built for two seasons and crescendoed in the nightly highlight reel that sold out the last half of the 2001-02 season is over, replaced by ...

A better team?

After losing six players, hiring a new coach, Brand’s injury and a 6-10 start, the Clippers are on a 37-win pace, which would rank among the top five finishes of the Donald T. Sterling era.

Nice to see our big guy getting it after only 21 years of ownership, isn’t it?

Actually, for those who ask, Donald and I get along fine, despite all the advice I tender. I said hello at a recent game and he sprang to his feet, looking overjoyed, exclaiming to friends sitting around him at courtside, “This is Heisler!”

It’s always nice to be treated like you’re special. Then he asked me, with a pained expression, why his team still wasn’t doing better, as if my opinion meant everything to him and I hadn’t laid it out in about 100 columns.

That was just like old times.

Happily for the organization, events are now conspiring to minimize Sterling’s impact, if, obviously, slowly.

Hiring Mike Dunleavy, signing Brand and Maggette and letting Lamar Odom go leaves them with $10 million in cap space next summer, in case some free agent like, oh, let’s just say ... Kobe Bryant ... feels like joining them for reasons of his own.

Indeed, the Clippers have heard Bryant may be interested and are excited about the possibility. Their planning now proceeds from one principle, saving all that cap space, even at the cost of turning down deals that might help now.

In the meantime, they have a big, young, talented roster that actually tries every night, which is another pleasant development for local fans.

Phoenix Coach Mike D’Antoni says the Clippers “probably have two of the hardest-working people in the league in Brand and Corey Maggette,” noting, “When your best players are your best workers, it makes it a lot easier.”

Of course, they also have a problem here and there, like shooting (42%, No. 23 in the league), ball-handling and defense (97.8 points a game, last in the league).

Youth cuts both ways, as when it settles for 20-footers, which is even worse on the road ... where they must prove themselves when the Grammys and the All-Star game take over Staples Center, sending the Clippers away for 15 of 17 games starting in late January.

Youth cuts really hard the other way if it leaves, but signing Brand and Maggette sent a message to the other players that they may have a future here too.

So what if it took 20 years to get to this step?

“I mean it was tough, you know what I’m saying?” says Quentin Richardson. “When you’ve got a group of guys that are all basically playing for their contract and their future, it’s going to get ugly a little bit at times.

“I know definitely what happened last year, we went through that phase. Guys were trying to take care of themselves, they had contracts and careers to take care of....

“The atmosphere is definitely better. Guys feel like we’re moving in the right direction, with them signing EB and Corey.... I mean, my first choice, obviously, is to stay here. I like it here, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. I’m just waiting to see, playing it out.”

The crowds have thinned out, but the style is entertaining and courtside seats are only $500, compared to the Lakers’ $1,800, putting them within reach of the middle class, assuming you and the wife would rather go to a game than Hawaii.

Or how about Hawaii and two in the lower bowl at $125 each, $125 less than the Lakers would charge, assuming you could buy them in the first place?

The Clippers might already be a playoff team in the East. On the other hand, nothing is as perishable as hope in this organization and at the moment, they’re still at the bottom of the West.

“This conference,” sighs Olden Polynice, a ‘90s Clipper in his wacky days who has returned as elder statesman. “This town.”

This team.

Faces and Figures

In Gotham, the hornswoggling continues. Spike Lee said New York fans are too smart to be “bamboozled” and would support rebuilding from scratch, and every friend new Knick President Isiah Thomas talked to told him the same thing. Nevertheless, Thomas said that’s his “last resort,” probably because he promised James Dolan, who hired him, he’d see if they really can make the playoffs.... However, just in case, Thomas noted Antonio McDyess is not untouchable, signaling that McDyess will be written off as a Scott Layden mistake unless he shows more than he has. Thomas also unloaded Clarence Weatherspoon, who was owed $11.5 million through 2005, but took back a superfluous point guard, Houston’s Moochie Norris, whose $4-million-a-year deal runs through 2006.... Dear Isiah: In the fix you’re in, you can’t afford more mistakes, like taking on more salary beyond 2005, when most of your current deals will be up.

In Detroit, the inevitable just rang the doorbell. In a philosophical contradiction, Piston boss Joe Dumars hired Larry Brown, a die-hard veterans’ coach, while trading Brown-type players Cliff Robinson and Michael Curry because he wanted to go with kids Tayshaun Prince, Memo Okur and Darko Milicic. Brown rarely plays Milicic, who has shown enough attitude to refuse to go in. Okur keeps throwing up long jumpers after Brown tells him not to and last week Prince had an argument with assistant coach Mike Woodson.... Said Brown, laughing it off: “And you guys [reporters] were worried about me and Memo. He [Prince] is the last guy in the world to get upset. You know, it was like Mary Poppins getting upset. I laughed. Woody said something to him and Tayshaun gave him a gesture. Woody just nipped it in the bud. Everybody knows what a great kid Tayshaun is.”

Oops (cont.): Chicago General Manager John Paxson won’t extend the contracts of Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry and will let them become restricted free agents in 2005. Paxson: “If a guy thinks he’s a max player, you risk absolutely nothing by letting him play [without an extension] that fourth year because you can always match it. It makes some sense from our end to let the guy play that fourth year out and let the market dictate.” ... The unspoken danger is that Curry or Chandler gets upset, spurns the team’s offer next summer and becomes an unrestricted free agent in 2006.... Underlining the Bulls’ dissatisfaction, Curry went out to practice without getting his ankles taped, angering Coach Scott Skiles, who made all the players run extra laps, after which they all ripped Curry.

Houston’s Mo Taylor, on his new slim physique: “I haven’t weighed 254 since Krispy Kreme franchised.”