S2 BASKETBALL OTHE GLOBE AND MAIL | SATURDAY,FEBRUARY22,2020
K
awhi Leonard slipped into the in-
terview room at Staples Center
clad in pearl-white sweats, calling
to mind a Jedi sage. His face a
mask, he gave no sign of recognizing any re-
porter, and set to analyzing the just-con-
cluded game with the dispassion of a chess
grandmaster.
What, a reporter asked, did you like
about your team’s performance?
A long pause. “I enjoyed the third quar-
ter, we got out in transition. That’s the thing
I liked.”
That was soon enough of that. The Los
Angeles Clippers star slid out of his chair
and was gone.
The next evening, I walked into the Los
Angeles Lakers’ postgame locker room in
the same arena. Anthony Davis had feet
planted in a bucket of ice and a scraggly
beard curling out from beneath his hoodie,
making him look like a cross between a
monk and a stork. Camera-people and re-
porters formed a half-moon around the
locker of LeBron James, who 20 minutes
later wandered out of the shower, his scalp
wrapped in a durag and a towel around his
waist.
This aging star cradled a Bose speaker
and combed out his beard as he sang along
to the rapper Drake:
“I’m only getting older, somebody
should have told you ...”
He craned his head and tossed a stanza
at Davis and another to JaVale McGee and
another to Danny Green, and they offered
call and response. Pulling on a Dodgers cap,
James stood, turned and gave an extended,
perceptive take on the night’s victory, even
joking about his age, before he excused
himself and ambled out the door.
“Wife’s feeling under the weather, man,”
he said. “Got to go.”
RIVALS?HARDLY
To wander through the catacombs of Sta-
ples Center last month, watching the Lak-
ers and Clippers play a collective five games
in four nights, was to observe a curious co-
habitation, two of the NBA’s best teams
sharing a home arena. Their star players
and coaches are as different as Venus and
Mars, even as they strive for the same goal:
an NBA championship.
That might sound like a Hollywood-
scripted battle for the heart of this city, but
that would be to overstate. The Clippers
can lay strong claim to being a top conten-
der this year, and their Big Tech oligarch
owner, Steve Ballmer, has waged a six-year
guerrilla war to claim the hearts and minds
of Angelenos, building dozens of Clippers-
logo-emblazoned basketball courts and
decking out youth teams in Clippers col-
ours.
But this city long ago settled on a single
beau: the Lakers.
The Lakers have those 16 championship
banners swinging in the Staples Center raf-
ters, along with all those retired jerseys of
players who need only a single name –Mag-
ic and Kareem and Elgin and Wilt and Sha-
quille and Kobe.
The deaths of Bryant, his daughter and
seven others in a helicopter crash in Janu-
ary served to underline an umbilical con-
nection between team and city, as Angele-
nos figuratively draped themselves in gold
and purple mourning crepe. Suffused with
sympathy, memories and grief, the city’s
basketball mood shifted in the days and
weeks that followed, as talk of a rivalry took
a timeout.
A few weeks before the accident, though,
a Sunday in early January offered me the
basketball equivalent of a full eclipse of the
moon: a hoops doubleheader. The Clippers
played in the afternoon against the hapless
Knicks and the Lakers took the gym back
that evening for a game against the Detroit
Pistons. It was the kind of day when one
might reasonably take a measure of the
town’s basketball temperature.
On Jan. 5, I wandered to the 20th row at
Staples before the laser shows and virtual
reality nuttiness kicked in to talk with the
tattooed master barber Robert Echiribel. A
customer at his Santa Monica shop, Active
Barbers, had handed him freebie tickets to
the Clippers, but he cautioned me not to
confuse his presence with his loyalties.
“I’m Lakers, man, all my life,” he said.
“The Clippers got all the right pieces, but
let’s face it: The reason I’m here is that the
ticket is free.”
He pointed at the rafters, disgusted. Be-
fore every Clippers game, the team drops
sheets of fabric and hides those Lakers ban-
ners. “You are sharing someone’s home
and when you walk in the room, you don’t
take down their photos,” he said. “It’s a sign
of disrespect.”
Clippers fans were not too hard to find,
though. The team invariably sells out. Al
and Irma Lopez, retirees, sat 15 rows back
under the basket and commended the
team for offering measurably cheaper seats
- about half the going price for Lakers
games. But they admitted they were a
touch lonely.
“Not only all my friends are Laker fans,
so are my two sons,” Al Lopez said. “They
talk banners and stuff and I say, ‘Yeah, but
we got the winners.’ ”
The Clippers’ biggest stars, Leonard and
Paul George, possess a home-born advan-
tage, as the men came of age on the exur-
ban jack-rabbit desert fringes, to which so
many working-class Los Angeles-area fam-
ilies have been consigned by the econom-
ics of a city as grossly expensive as New
York.
But street cred buys only so much love.
The Clippers opened their home schedule
against the Lakers this season and when
Leonard – the team’s marquee signing, a
champion fresh off a title last year with To-
ronto – took the microphone to say a few
words, the Lakers fans who had jammed
the arena showered him with boos.
Not long afterward, Leonard attended
an L.A. Rams football game and his smiling
face appeared on the scoreboard, and,
again, boos.
I hopped in a car and drove through sun-
washed L.A. in search of incipient Clipper
love. I nosed south toward working- and
middle-class Inglewood, where the Clip-
pers plan to build a Spaceship Enterprise of
a new arena along Century Boulevard. I
found a hoops court painted in Clippers
colours, and players in Lakers purple-and-
gold jerseys.
Yo, any Clipper fans here?
Ray Guidos stopped bouncing his bas-
ketball, squinted and shook his head at
that fool question.
“Man, you’re going to have trouble find-ing Clippers,” he said, although by then I
didn’t need an explanation. “It’s Lakers,
Lakers, Lakers.”
I drove on and pulled into a parking lot
less than a mile from the site of the pro-
posed arena and chatted with Ray Guevara,
a young security guard outside a Ross Dress
for Less. He watches the Clippers happily
enough – if the Lakers are not on. “Truth is,”
he said, “it’s a Laker town.”
I nodded and nosed the car back toward
Staples Center.GUESTSATHOMEAs Staples belongs to the Lakers, the Clip-
pers play more than their fair share of noon
games in Los Angeles, a bio-rhythmic trav-
esty for players and coaches accustomed to
working nights. Coach Doc Rivers, eyes red
and watery from too many nights of staring
at too many game films, made no attempt
to hide his distaste.
“I hate afternoon games,” he said during
my visit, leaning into the verb.
And his players?
“I don’t even ask them, because I’m
afraid of their answers.”
Rivers, 58, is a quick-to-laugh boulevar-
dier; Frank Vogel, 46, the Lakers’ coach, af-fects the persona of an insurance adjuster.
He lets his stars toss down the personality.
Rivers tells the gathered reporters that
he has not a clue if Leonard, whose chron-
ically achy legs caused him to miss 22
games last season, will play this game. He
rarely plays on consecutive nights, a strate-
gy designed to ensure his availability for
the games to come that will matter more.
“I wait for the medical staff to tell me,”
Rivers said.
That approach has led to oblique locker
room grumbling. Respect, but not love, ac-
crues for this star. A day earlier, the Clippers
dropped a game to the pitiful Pistons, and
Clippers centre Montrezl Harrel, a burly
dreadlocked RangeRover of a man, sound-
ed as if he had had enough.
“We’re not a great team –you have to get
out of your mind,” he told us. “We have two
players who have never been a part of this
team.”
The players in question were its stars.
The Clippers’ game against the Knicks, a
team last competitive during the U.S. ad-
ministration of president James Garfield,
was a free-shooting affair. While Leonard
rested, George dominated, with fallback
jumpers stolen from Kobe Bryant, who had
stolen the move from Michael Jordan. In
the NBA, admiration is expressed through
creative theft.
George finished with 32 points. But the
Knicks, no one’s idea of an offensive jugger-
naut, scored 69 points in the first half.
What, reporters asked Rivers, did you tell
your players at halftime?
“Guard someone,” he said.
The Clippers remain a Jaguar firing on
half of its allotted cylinders. As Leonard is
rarely heard, and George – who also is now
injured – can be prickly, Rivers takes the
role of lightning rod.
Did you put too much pressure on your
veteran, Patrick Beverley, by asking him to
play the unaccustomed role of point
guard? A reporter might have thought he
was poking at the coach.
Rivers laughed.
“Yeah, that was stupid, terrible coach-
ing!” he said.
After the game, the Clippers banners
rolled up and that flotilla of gold-and-pur-
ple Lakers championship banners once
again floated free. An usher pointed at a
seat near courtside. “That one was US$180
for the Clippers,” he said. “It’s US$400 for
the Lakers.”
Financial common sense, he said, has
made Clippers fans of some of his friends.
The Lakers’ locker room was a Chateau
Marmont, that stylish old stars and starlets
hotel, for the elegantly attired. Kyle Kuzma,
his hair dyed molten gold, peeled off his
silk shirt and cashmere sweater and leop-
ard-print pants. Davis paused to whisper a
joke to James, whose couture is rarely less
thanau courant.
The Lakers have stars to spare. Rajon
Rondo, once a Celtic point guard and invet-
erate antagonist of all things Lakers, mans
the backup point. Centre Dwight Howard,
whose egocentrism has caused him to cycle
through six teams in the past eight years,
ran around tossing up his arms in mock Le-
Bron style, claiming the role of court jester.
No Laker paid him any mind.
The team took the floor against the Pis-
tons with a Globetrotter-like spin and
whirl, behind the back passes and soaring
blocks. James, at 35 an ancient in the world
of the NBA, lacks quite the old lift on his
jump shot, so he has covertly aged by rein-
carnating himself as Magic Johnson and
becoming the league’s best passer.
He came downcourt, putting the ball
once, twice between his legs, and with a
sleight of hand flipped the ball into the air
to Davis, who, like a 6-foot-10 wide receiver,
caught and tossed it through the hoop.
The joint went wild.NEWYORKTIMESNEWSSERVICEClippersfightfortheheartofLosAngeles
Ballmer’steamisatoppick
fortheNBAchampionship,
butcan’twinovercitywhose
loyaltylieswiththeLakers
MICHAELPOWELLLOS ANGELES
LakerLeBronJamesandClipperKawhiLeonardviefortheballduringtheirgameinLosAngeleslastChristmas.TheStaplesCenterhouses
twooftheNBA’sbestteams,butonlyonehas16championshipbannersswinginginitsrafters.RINGOH.W.CHIU/THEASSOCIATEDPRESSMIAMIDwyaneWadesaysthatwhenever
hewouldheartheU.S.nationalanthem
playbeforeMiamihomegames,hewould
takeamomentandlooktotherafters.
“Ialwaysimaginedmyjerseybeingup
there,”Wadesaid.
Hewillnolongerhavetoimaginethe
sight.Afterthisweekend,it’llbetherefor
good.
WadewillbecomethefifthHeatplayer
togethisnumberretiredbytheteam,
joiningAlonzoMourning,TimHardaway,
ShaquilleO’NealandChrisBosh.Athree-
daycelebrationofWade’stimeinMiami
startsonFriday,aweekendhighlightedby
hisNo.3formallygoingtotherafterson
Saturdaynight,whentheHeatplayhost
totheClevelandCavaliers.
Wadespent16seasonsintheNBA,14
andahalfofthosewiththeHeat.Hewas
oneoftwoplayerstobepartofallthree
Heatchampionshipteams–UdonisHas-
lem,whoseNo.40willalmostcertainlybe
retiredbytheteamoneday,istheother.
Itwasneveraquestionofwhether
Wade’sjerseywasgoingtoberetiredby
theHeat,onlyaquestionofwhen.He’s
thefranchise’sall-timeleaderinpoints,
games,assistsandsteals,andisprobably
goingtokeepmost,ifnotall,ofthoserecordsforaverylongtime.Consider:He
scored21,556regular-seasonpointswith
theHeatandAlonzoMourningissecond
with9.459.
Earlierthisseason,LosAngelesClippers
coachDocRivers–likeWade,aChicago
nativewhowentontoplayatMarquette
–saidhebelievesWadedoesn’tget
enoughcreditforwhathedidasaplayer,
especiallyintheNBAFinals.
“He’sbeenunderratedhiswholelife,”
Riverssaid.“Hedidn’tgetrecruitedvery
highly.TookMarquettetoaFinalFour.He
stilldidn’tgoashighasheshouldhavein
thedraftandthenhetooktheMiamiHeat
toNBAchampionships.That’sjustwhohe
is.”
Wadewasthe2006NBAFinals’MVP,
wasselectedto13all-stargamesinhis16
seasons,wasanall-starMVPin2010and
wonanOlympicgoldmedal.
“EverytimeIlookuptotheraftersand
seeyour#3hangingthere,I’llthinkofthe
impactyouhadnotonlyonthisorga-
nization,thiscityandthisleague,buton
mylife,”HeatcoachErikSpoelstrawrote
inanopenlettertoWadethatwillbepart
oftheteam’sgame-nightgiveawaypro-
gramforfansonSaturday.
THEASSOCIATEDPRESSMIAMIHEATTORETIREWADE’SNO.3THISWEEKENDDwyaneWadetakespartinagamebetweentheHeatandPhiladelphia76erslastApril.
WadespentmostofhisNBAcareerinMiami.MICHAELREAVES/GETTYIMAGES