PLAYA VISTA — Finally, the Clippers can take that misguided and maligned “Streetlights over Spotlights” slogan, drag it down off their desktop and into the trash. Empty trash.
With the slow-motion acquisition of James Harden complete, they’re finally ready for their closeup, for their spotlight.
And in time for the opening of the Intuit Dome next season, it’s what the Clippers owe their season ticket-holding fans if they’re going to ask them to pay, in some cases, $8,000 or $9,000 more per seat next season: A show.
These aren’t anyone’s gutty little Clippers. They’re not playing their part as the irrelevant other team, either.
These are your potentially combustible Clippers. They’re about to be the heavily scrutinized Clippers. They’re the brand of intriguing that will actually get people’s attention in a crowded and often antagonistic L.A. market.
That’s why Coach Tyronn Lue’s pregame news conference on Wednesday was even more packed than it was for Victor Wembenyama’s first visit to L.A., and for any of those he held in the previous 11 times his Clippers faced the Lakers.
It’s probably why Russell Westbrook, smarting too after the loss to his former teammates on the Lakers, got bristly for the first time Wednesday with the Clipper beat writers. They kept asking him about his fit with Harden this time, their third on the same team after shared stops in Oklahoma City and Houston. Because it stands to figure: A new point guard will likely affect the role of the point guard already there.
“I’m not the GM, the owner,” Westbrook said. “I’m a player here on the team like everybody else and I’m going to figure it out, do the best I can. I’m going to compete every night, do my part. I can’t control what other people do, how it mesh. I don’t really know. I don’t have that answer. I’m going to just try my hardest to make it as comfortable for everybody like I’ve done since I’ve been here.”
Those unknowns are why 40-plus media members crammed into the team’s modest, galley-shaped interview space at their facility after practice on Thursday, waiting for an hour to hear Harden speak as a Clipper for the first time: “I’m not a system player, I am a system.”
The man is a 10-time All-Star, former league MVP and a superior slogan writer, too.
So it could work, on the court as well as at the box office.
Harden is a divisive figure who has become so well known as a successful architect of his own trades – from Houston, Brooklyn and, now, Philadelphia – that it’s as though people forget that he’s almost as good a basketball player.
But ESPN’s analytics has the Clippers’ chances to win the NBA title jumping from 8% to 12%, while giving them a 22% chance to reach the NBA Finals – the best among Western Conference teams.
Harden could help because he’s a big guard, an elite distributor (his 10.7 assists per game led the NBA last season) and a dependable marksman. Exactly who All-Stars Kawhi Leonard and Paul George have been clamoring for.
And Harden was excelling beside Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving on the Brooklyn Nets early on, remember? He was averaging 24.2 points, 11.7 assists, 8.2 rebounds and shooting 50% in his first month with that squad before that experiment was derailed by injuries and Irving’s unwillingness to get vaccinated so he could play.
Yes, the Clippers traded their redundancies on the wing for redundancies at guard, but it could be worth it: In the final season of his $36 million contract, Harden will be playing for his next payday and plenty motivated to prove “that I’m very elite as an individual and I can fit in and make a championship run work.”
There’s winning with a reticent superstar like Leonard, his underappreciated co-star George and a cast of quality contributors. And then there’s winning with a couple of larger-than-life characters like Harden and Westbrook, A-listers who have armies of fans line up to defend and support them on social media.
Teammates pic.twitter.com/E9q04YjmWv
— janis carr (@janiscarr) November 1, 2023
Harden chose to greet his new and new-again teammates in the Clippers’ locker room on Tuesday night in full view, during the half-hour before tipoff when the media is allowed in. Conversely, Leonard once insisted reporters stop recording him as he was shooting free throws.
Harden can be the ceiling raiser the Clippers are claiming he is, or he could be the reason the floor falls out from beneath them.
That tightrope tension and potential tripwires are going to get people to pay attention in L.A., where we’re addicted to drama, or at least the possibility thereof.
Start with stars and winning, but give us a good soap opera too.
The Lakers are 17-time NBA champions, 12 of them coming in L.A. How they cornered the market on high-functioning palace intrigue always made them so incredibly riveting.
So it was a strange thing that happened on my commute Wednesday to Crypto.com Arena to see the Lakers beat the Clippers, 130-125, in an overtime game dominated by stars on both sides. It hit me: The story wasn’t the Lakers this time; it was Harden-to-the-Clippers.
