i wish i was a little bit taller

The NBA season is in full swing and although I still haven't been able to catch a single game (the joys of living in England). I have been checking up on my beloved LA Clippers and true to their troubled history they languish near the bottom of the pacific division, a place they know oh so well.

People always ask me why I became a Clipper fan instead of following the championship laden crosstown Lakers. After all, LA isn't split into boundaries of loyalty, like say London or Chicago. Its a city that wouldn't be mistaken for a 'sports city' (go to a dodger game and most fans leave before the 7th inning in a tie game to beat traffic) yet when it comes to the Lakers, Angelinos are intensely passionate. Every Kobe or Odom move is scrutinized or lauded, while the Clippers remain anonymous and almost forgotten like a bald-headed step child. So how could I like them? I guess I just like the lovable loser. our best player

Think about it, if you support the best team like the Lakers, a win is nothing, commonplace. Yet if they lose a game they should win, woahh! world war 3 would get less newspaper time. So what is there to celebrate, maybe one measly championship? However, for the Clippers if we lose a game, ahh, no big deal, no need to lose sleep over it, nobody expects anything. But imagine if we actually beat a good team, guess what? Party time! If we beat a bad team, guess what? Party time! So do the math, 82 games in the season even if we just win 20 and lose 62...guess what? 20 parties a year, every win is celebration time for the fan of a bad team. Who needs a championship when you can party 20 times a year. Of course your expectations have to be low, and if you support a team like the Clippers you don't only judge a single game in terms of a win or loss, you judge it if they beat the spread. For instance, the Lakers are supposed to beat the Clippers by 10 points and we only lose by 7, fantastic. Not a win, but we can say things like, 'man, we had that game, just a little bad luck at the end.' Or 'If only we just had a break we could have had a chance.' Luck, maybe the Clippers haven't had so much of that, but a 'break' or a tear, that's another story.

Starting in 1977 when the Clippers were still called the Braves and played in Buffalo, they traded two 1st round draft picks for future Hall of Famer Nate Archibald. Within a month, he tore his ACL and missed the season. 5 years later when the team moved to California, they drafted Terry Cummings with the 2nd pick only to find he had a heart arrhythmia. The next year, their star Norm Nixon, blew his knee out playing softball, then ruptured his Achilles tendon a year later and missed two straight years. And so the curse began. Since then, two number one draft picks have blown out a knee before even playing and one decided he'd rather play in europe than for the clippers (smart move). 

For the fan, we can take solace in the fact that if these players had all been healthy we would easily have won a few playoff games if not made a championship, we must be cursed! Even the tagline of the official Clippers Proud Clipper fansBlog is 'Because if you mangle an ACL you get LAC,' brilliant. Of course, we try not to bring up that we have the most inept owner in the modern game, have drafted player after player who didn't last more than a couple of years in the league. We can't sign a free agent, (and when we do they turn out to have lost the abilities that got us so excited to sign them in the first place) and the Clippers played in the worst arena in American sports for 20 years (ahhh..the LA sports arena. Some of my fondest childhood memories are from watching games in a 3/4 empty arena. Including this 'classic' Clippers- Nuggets game. Needless to say there was no revenge enacted.)

We have to remember that the Boston Celtics' top draft pick passed away after a drug overdose in 1986 before ever playing an NBA game and 7 years later their star player literally fell down and died in practice. No little knee injuries for these guys, no sir. Yet the Celtics fans don't complain of a curse, instead they have won 17 NBA titles. The Clippers on the other hand have had two winning seasons in the last 30 years and have only one playoff series win ever. Year after year, we hope that this might be the year that people will take notice, only to realize its the same old clipper story.

So I thought this would be the season, but our star rookie broke a leg, our star point guard forgot how to shoot and there we are, dangling above last place. And, to be honest, I don't think I'd have it any other way.