So it turns out that if you take the word of Donald Sterling, via T.J. Simers, Vinny Del Negro’s job is safe for the rest of the season.
This comes on the heels of a dismal 8-11 stretch for the Clippers that culminated in a winless three-game road trip — consisting of two blowouts and a jaw-dropping loss to the last-place Hornets. But a couple days later, after two sweet, merciful wins at home for the embattled coach, “everything is good,” said Sterling.
There is an air of finality which pervades over this Spring’s NBA Playoffs. Looming behind record television ratings lie the uncertainty of the new collective bargaining agreement, which has the potential to alter the league’s economic and regional power balance. On the court, the time for the heirs of Jordan seems to be coming to a close—as Kobe Bryant, Paul Pierce, and Kevin Garnett—the men who once played against his aging Airness, prepares to leave the stage. Lebron James, Dwayne Wade, and Dirk Nowitzki are poised to seize the throne, and right on their heels are the league’s youngest stars; Durant and Rose, eager to jump the line. For most Angelenos, the annual Spring basketball fever that grips the city have come to a premature and inglorious end with the Lakers embarrassing meltdown. And for some Clippers fans, the end of Phil Jackson’s era one week after Blake Griffin’s unanimous selection as Rookie of the Year has instilled hope that the ground is finally shifting between LA’s two NBA franchises.
As human beings, we derive meanings from patterns, we base our lives and our thoughts and our plans on these patterns. The more reliable the pattern is, the more salient it becomes in the constant formation of our lives. It can be something as large and foundational of belief like religion or the sun coming up. Or it can apply to something simple, like the expectations of the performance of a sports team. Again, the more predictable, the better. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Clipper fan or not (we’re not arguing over something as amorphous and childish as a Clipper Curse), everyone would agree that Donald Sterling is a terrible owner.
Heckling is an inherent part of any sport. The barbs and pointed shouts can create a toxic environment for opposing teams to play on the road. Players hear some of the screams and coaches have to yell their instructions over repetitive onslaught of derogatory exclamations of crazed fans. The fans feed off of the energy and it can snowball into hostile atmosphere, making high performance even more difficult to attain. It’s why playing in Utah is so difficult, why Boston is more than just the intimidation of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, etc. But heckling against home players doesn’t accomplish much. It doesn’t make them play better. Sure, it’s hard not to scream “No!” when Cookie or Rasual puts the ball on the floor, when DeAndre attempts a post move or when Baron takes a wild three or a turn around jumper, but it’s completely different to constantly deride the home player. Donald Sterling doesn’t know this.
One of my favorite movie lines of all time is in Bottle Rocket, during a scene where Owen Wilson is trying to convince Luke Wilson to join in a planned heist. “Here are a few of the ingredients,” he says, ticking off elements of the plan on his fingers. “Dynamite, pole vaulting, laughing gas, helicopters…can you see how incredible this is going to be?!?” The joke, of course, is that it’s a terrible plan — long on pole vaulting, short on logic. The Clippers enter the 2010-11 campaign with a new coach, a new general manager and a whole bunch of new parts, including last year’s top overall draft pick, the Completely Cleared for All Basketball Activities Blake Griffin. And the question is: Has Neil Olshey put together a workable plan or will it be another season of laughing gas and helicopters?