What up everyone, it’s officially 2010 and as a diehard Los Angeles Clippers fan I’m looking forward to this decade being better than the last two and a half decades in LA. I’m sure that’s a thought most of us in Clipper Nation have hoped for every season 10 years, but this one really feels right! (I’m also hoping that my sarcastically feigned optimism isn’t too obvious.)
Sure, their have been no shortage of completely strange, laughable, and curse-like things happening to the team since their 1984 move to LA and even though 2009 wasn’t that different than the previous decades, maybe the way it ended was its own strange glimpse of a brighter future.
Allow me to explain.
Since the 2003-2004 season Mike Dunleavy, Sr. has been the head coach. Aside from portions one magnificent breakthrough season in 05-06, Clips fans have pretty much despised him. I say portions, because as noted in one of my previous posts, Dunleavy’s substitutions cost LA a win in a pivotal double-overtime playoff loss to the Phoenix Suns that successfully sealed his fate as a pariah and erased the strides made that year.
Just two of the many photos that capture Mike Dunleavy’s futility as a coach.
(AP/Getty Images)
Nothing was the same after that playoff loss, and the usual suffering, disappointments and losing kicked in, as well as the excruciatingly painful (for both him and us) injury to Shaun Livingston. Sam Cassell left, Tim Thomas played like shi I mean like he did every other non-contract year, etc. In other words, fans were constantly reminded that they were still rooting for the Los Angeles Clippers who had only been to the playoffs four times in their LA history.
Fair or not, Dunleavy has shouldered a lot of the blame for the mishaps and continues to draw the ire of many dedicated Clips followers. So when it was announced that one of the most disliked coaches, on one of the oddest teams, was going to miss the final NBA game of the new millenium’s first decade because he threw his back out sneezing (w-t-f?) it all somehow seemed appropriate.
It’s no secret that the fans in LA having been wanting Dunleavy off the bench for quite a while now (one of his nicknames is “Dumbleavy” and FireDunleavy.com recently put up a video of fans chanting for his firing after a recent loss), so even though he wasn’t fired, I’m sure they’ll take what they can get.
In what was a shock to no one except maybe Clippers owner Donald Sterling, the Clippers offense thrived without Dunleavy in their New Year’s Eve game against Elton Brand and the Philadelphia 76ers and got a blowout 104-88 win. No really, they did great, shooting 55 percent from the field, making 10 of 16 three pointers and DeAndre Jordan finally got some more playing time and contributed with seven points and nine rebounds in only 19 minutes.
I present the Mike Dunleavy face, which most Clippers fans make after his play calls and substitutions.
(Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)
Brand’s first return was greeted with expected chorus of boos, but as Dave McMenamin of ESPN Los Angeles explained in a recent story, it seems like both sides are quietly moving on from all the vitriolic traitor chatter of 2008.
Sometimes you have to go through painful things that don’t make sense at the moment to improve in life, and the Brand saga is a prime example of that. Hardly anyone in Clipper Nation was happy with it all in 2008, but today’s hindsight has most fans happy that it turned out the way it did.
Moving on from a checkered past is a theme I’ve repeated many times in these posts, because it’s something all Clippers fans wish to do and all jokes aside, maybe there’s a part of me that thinks that if I keep saying it, it’ll actually happen.
There’s no time like the present, since Blake Griffin will be back soon and we’re afforded a fresh start with a 0-0 record so far this decade, which starts off with a matchup tonight against the Portland Trailblazers. The Blazers are suiting up something like nine healthy guys, and one of them is 36 year old Juwan Howard.
Word has it that Dunleavy might even miss another game and assistant Tony Brown could coach again tonight. After the win against Philly, which Brown coached, he was quoted as saying “The intensity was way up, which is something that we hadn’t had in a while.”
The Clippers might have played with more intensity in a game without Dunleavy? I’m stunned.
If this isn’t fate telling us to finally break away from our tumultuous history, I don’t know when we’ll ever have a better chance.
-Will.
“Diary of a Clippers Fan” will be published Mondays and Thursdays during the regular season.
