Los Angeles – At first it seemed like a power play connected to a much larger tiff. Kobe Bryant to the Los Angeles Clippers? He couldn’t be seriously considering moving down the hall at Staples Center, from the gold standard of the NBA to a team that seemed to have a standing date at the NBA lottery in June.
Oh, but he was. And it wasn’t just part of his feud with Shaquille O’Neal or Phil Jackson.
It seems that Bryant saw early on that the Clippers did have the right personnel to make their own name in this town.
“We offered him a deal. He might’ve seen the talent we had or he might’ve been flirting with the neighbor,” Clippers’ forward Elton Brand joked after the Game 5 victory that eliminated the Nuggets. “He might’ve saw some potential because he’d played against us a lot.”
Bryant stuck with the Lakers, knowing the Clippers might have a better chance of winning in the short term.
Monday night, the Clippers won their first playoff series since 1976, when the franchise was located in Buffalo.
“It’s great. It’s great for the fans, and the people who’ve been so loyal. Everything has gone as planned,” said Clippers general manager Elgin Baylor. “We expected to be in the playoffs and we expected to get through the first round.”
After the game, Baylor was in great spirits, choosing to revel in the victory rather than snipe at past critics.
“I don’t care about that,” Baylor said. “All that is behind me and I’m just looking forward to the future and for bigger and better things.”
Last summer, Sam Cassell and Cuttino Mobley saw much the same thing Bryant had when they signed with the team as free agents.
“This is why I signed,” Mobley said after the Clippers’ victory. “I love to prove people wrong, to do things other people don’t want to do.”
A low blow
Clippers center Chris Kaman wasn’t the only Clipper upset at the NBA’s decision not to suspend the Nuggets’ Reggie Evans on Monday for grabbing Kaman from behind Saturday night in Game 4.
“Something should’ve happened,” Clippers forward Walter McCarty said. “I’ve been in the league for 10 years, and I never saw anything like that. Growing up, playing street ball, you do things like that, you get kicked. You never think something like that will happen in the NBA.”
The Clippers’ fans let loose with an angry chorus of boos when Evans entered the game with 9:41 remaining in the second quarter Monday night.
Shortly thereafter Evans was hit hard by Clippers’ forward Vladimir Radmanovic on a drive to the basket. No foul was called, and Evans jumped up and down in frustration and pounded his chest. The crowd approved of the non-call, with the boos even louder than when he entered the game.
Evans played just over four minutes.
Footnotes
Clippers coach Mike Dunleavy, on oft criticized owner Donald Sterling, “There hasn’t been one day that I’ve been on the job that he’s disappointed me.” … Brand, on what won the series: “It started with defense, defense the entire series. Carmelo Anthony is such a talented scorer. No one could guard a player like that one-on-one, so we tried to help. He was 8-for-24 tonight. We definitely held him in check.”
