How did we all become clipper fans

I was actually a Laker fan when I was a kid. Its pretty typical when there’s Horry, Shaq, Fox, Glen Rice, Kobe. Never really was a Kobe fan, but really liked Horry.

Eventually, when Lakers faced Phili, for some awkward reason, I didn’t want Lakers to win. I wanted Iverson to take them all the way. Eventually, I started to hate the Lakers as everyone else around me was a Laker fan. I started to watch Clippers game also as LO, Quentin Richardson etc etc practically made the game fun to watch.

always strayed away from the norm….so when all my friends were michael jordan fans, i was a huge dominique wilkins fan (FYI: he was robbed in the dunk contest against MJ, youtube it). i was young, so only liked the hawks because of niq. so when he was traded to the clippers for danny manning, i became maybe the only clipper fan in Pennsylvania. Niq got traded by the end of that same season, by then it was evident that he wasn’t the same player, so i refused to become a celtics fan(niqs new temporary home). once my father inform me of the type of team the clips were i was excited to claim the underdog and watch them grow into a respected team. its been tough at times, but still fun to be a clips fan.

My Dad had season tickets for about 15 years. When I was in the third grade he started taking me, and I became obsessed with players like Pooh Richardson, Loy Vaught, Stanley Roberts, and Harold Ellis. At Sports Camp in the fourth grade I dressed up as Loy Vaught for “Dress up as your favorite sports player” day. I got made fun of incessantly for the rest of camp.

I played YMCA basketball in Los Angeles for most of my young life, and as many of you from Los Angeles probably know, the program is called the Jr. Lakers basketball program, with all the teams being called the Jr. Lakers. At the end of one of my seasons, my Dad tried to get a Laker player to come to the gym and talk to all of the teams and parents about basketball, and growing up playing sports. No Laker would come. Instead, my Dad was able (because of his good relationship with his ticket representative) to come into contact with one of the departments that send Clippers players out into the field to talk to youth, and I think it was Terry Dehere that ended up coming out to talk to a bunch of Jr. Laker kids.

In the eighth grade I got accepted to be a Clipper ballboy at the inaugural season at the Staples Center (which also happened to be Lamar Odom’s rookie season — still remember watching him with my jaw on the floor in his first game, dropping 30 I think on Toronto). Being a ballboy that season only solidified my undying loyalty to the team. My friends would love it too, because the Clippers gave me two free tickets to every game I worked in the section right behind one of the hoops on the floor. My buddies (who were mostly laker fans) would also love it when I talked the camera guys I befriended to get them on the big screen every night.

The Clippers have just always been my team I guess, and they’ve always been accessible to their fans, which makes loving them so easy. I’ve never wavered in my love for them, and though they’ve hit patches where they haven’t been the most exciting team to watch in the world, I’ll never stop repeating the mantra, “Just wait till next year, just wait till next year.”

when I was a kid the Lakers were in there swing with Shaq and Kobe and I rooted for them I am not sure why but I did. But when they traded Shaq I started to dislike the Lakers, then my Dad started getting prenium seats from his work to clippers games and seeing as I needed a team to root for I started watching the clips. I wasn’t a real huge fan though until 04-05 probably because I was still to young to really follow anything but since then I have followed the team and I will continue to follow them no matter how bad they stink.

I have only followed the NBA since the mid 90’s and was planning a round the world backpacking trip (on my way to live in New Zealand for a year) with my fiance in 2000 when I knew we were going to have a couple of stops in the US and wanted to take in an NBA game more than anything. Our itinery was set to include LA and San Fransisco so had to sort out games within the 8 day span before we flew onto Hawaii.

The Warriors were out of town and I couldn’t believe how much the Lakers tickets were. Could have splashed the cash on Lakers seats but decided to investigate the Clippers and as the British always like an underdog, decided I could fit in a game against the Trailblazers in the Staples Center.

So Feb 25th 2001, I watch a Lamar Odom lead team beat the Trailblazers in a double OT classic 123-120. We had pretty good seats and I’ve got loads of photos. Loved every minute of it, despite having to describe everything to my other half!!

We arrived on a little train not far from the Staples but worst thing was the game ended late (was an evening game) and we got lost leaving the stadium as we left at a different exit (after I plundered the gift shop!). Ended up getting lost in downtime with no-one around but dodgy looking cars. Long story short, got back to our shit youth hostel just off Hollywood Blvd but my fiance says she is never going back to LA as she was scared for her life!!!

Hoping the next time I catch the Clippers will be in Madison Square Garden on my honeymoon!

So naturally the Clippers are a perfect team to get behind. I’m sure that’s the reason for many of you too along with not liking the Lakers. I don’t dislike the Lakers, sometimes, I’ll even root for them. That’s only cause I have city pride and want to rep Los Angeles.

The time I became a Clips fan though was in the middle of the Lakers 3 peat. I saw a Clippers game with Miles, QRich, and Elton, and it was really great to watch. This was when Odom was injured and eric piatkowski was one of the best 3 point shooters in the league.

during some legendary times, and then jumped off the bandwagon as soon as Magic retired, or Shaq got traded away. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be ashamed to admit that you used to be a Laker fan, because it doesn’t sound like you guys were ever true Laker fans to begin with. So much for sticking with a team through thick and thin, huh?

Like a few of you, I, too, started off as a Laker fan (and proudly still am one). I was also disappointed when Shaq and Fisher left, Rudy T. took over, and Kobe descended into his short-lived “dark era.” During a particularly bad game, I started flipping channels just in time to see the Clippers start the 4th quarter in a match up against the Pistons. I wasn’t too fond of the Pistons at that point (this was the season after the ’04 NBA Finals), so I was already pulling for the Clippers.

The Clips took Detroit to two overtimes, and only ended up losing by two or three. I was really impressed with their collective performance; I know he’s a low-down dirty traitor now, but Elton Brand played with so much intensity and had so much fight in that game. Despite the loss, I became immediately hooked and invested in the Clippers, and I’ve loved them ever since. In fact, each and every year whenever my friends and I talk about the Lakers, I always say that I hope the Lakers go 78-4, losing four games to… yep, you guessed it… the Clippers.

Why? Because the Lakers are already established. They’ve got the legacy, the championships, and the respect. Losing to the Clippers isn’t going to keep them out of the playoffs. But on the other hand (in my mind, at least), beating the Lakers, or any top-tier team, multiple times can do a lot for the Clippers’ confidence and help with re-building their reputation. I’d be really conflicted in a LAC/LAL WCF match up. But when it comes to the regular season games, I’ll always root for the Clippers.

The Lakers and their fans tend to get a completely undeserved bad rap around here, and I think that’s a real shame. You guys have more in common with them than you’ll ever know, and the sooner both sides wake up to that fact, the better it will be.

I enjoy learning some background on the peeps who post on this site

i copied and pasted this from another thread, for those who are not thread monkeys:

“i liked teams because i liked their uniforms (simpler times). the powder blue was very appealing to me at 10 years old (or so).

then when the clips moved to la i adopted them as my team. i would write little basic programs so that i could examine their statistics (filling them in during the games, yep ima an ubber nerd). their wasnt as much coverage back then.

as zhiv points out, i was always a little oppositional back then, and i think i became a fan to rebel against all of the front-running laker fans. add in a dysfunctional level of stubborness, stir vigorously and voila!

when i turned 16, me and my buddy would drive to the sports arena for games.

i was at the game when ron harper got injured (i remember harp was somewhat trying to clown mugsy boagues for his lack of height).

anyhow, i always took a lot of crap over it, but i will always be a clipper fan.

i think in a clinical setting my condition is know as ‘learned helplessness’."

i should also add that when i was in high school, i got in a fight with a kid who was wearing a bobble head magic johnson tshirt, while i was adorning a danny manning bobble head tshirt. i can only imagine how stupdily funny this must have looked (it was somewhat of a ‘slap fight’). so in a romantic sense i have ‘bled’ for the clippers, khehehe.

i used to have a full nerf court and i would pretend i was michael cage grabbing boards and throwing it down (sans jerry curl and white as day).

with Magic, Worthy, Kareem, etc., but lost interest after Kareem retired. I started watching some Lakers games on TV again when they started winning championships in the early 2000’s. Didn’t care too much for Kobe though, but really liked Shaq (if nothing else you gotta admit the guy has personality). I was just starting to get back into the Lakers then that whole Kobe rape charge thing happened. Then after that Shaq left and I blamed Kobe for that (like everyone else did), so I just gave up on the Lakers again. Then one day in the summer of ‘05, I was jogging at the beach and listening to a sports talk radio station when, lo and behold, Sam Cassell was being interviewed. I always liked Sammy’s game, so when he said he was coming to the Clippers I said to my self “Clippers!? Oh yeah, there is another NBA team in L.A.”. I decided to check out a few Clippers games during the “05-”06 season and I became hooked! I’ve been a season ticket holder ever since. Becoming a Clippers fan, to me, is like becoming a compulsive gambler: if you win big the first time you gamble you can become hooked, sending good money after bad always expecting to win again like the first time. But of course you never do. Hopefully this next season we’ll become winners again and justify my investment. Come on Clippers! Baby needs a new pair of shoes!!

we got our first Clipper season seats. We have had some ups but for the most part is has been a partnership in misery starting with Bo Kimble completely sucking.

I was doing a divorce for a guy who was having trouble paying his bill. He had Clipper season tickets and asked if I would take payment in Clippers tickets. I was a big Lakers fan at the time, but I figured anything – even Clippers tickets – was better than nothing. My brother and brother-in-law had Lakers season tickets (still do) but they’re up near the ceiling in 318 and I would get serious vertigo up there. It was like watching from another planet. You really needed a Hubbell telescope. Going to Clips games it was pretty exciting to be able to sit close enough to read the names on the backs of the unis without binoculars. When I discovered you could sit down there at a Clippers game for about what it costs to sit with your head brushing the ceiling for a Lakers game, I offered to split the seats with him the next season. The year after that he bailed out all together and I inherited the seats. You go to almost every game and after awhile the players become like family – you can’t help but to become invested. First couple of Clippers – Lakers games I was one conflicted doppleganger, but after awhile the purple and gold just sort of seeps out of your blood. Besides its sort of fun to wear your Clipper gear into Starbucks like a big FU during the annual Laker play off frenzy.

At my age, young girls in tight spandex shorts go a long way towards making up for 19-63.

 I, as a kid, remember going to my dad’s brother’s house were he would have there insanely enthusiastic Laker playoff gatherings. the whole place is rooting for them. this is the first time really seeing games on tv. magic worthy etc. they loved them. so i started to love them. and i did for some years. there was on other team in so cal right? Later in the later in my early teens my older brother, myself and some friends began to play video games competitively. sports in particular. we would all pick about 4 teams each, to control in a season. We would select teams in a draft type setting. ’ hey , what in the world, there is another team in LA! before ever having to get that low to have to select them, i noticed one year there was actually a player on that that team that had his one special move. some guy named Manning. Well that league i mentioned got somewhat bigger and the miami heats and the timberwolves and the mavericks and clippers, teams that were atrocious, had to be picked. my brother picked them and made lead look like gold. he literally made Lamond Murray play offensively like Jordan and low Vaught have offense like Malone. so i was a leader not a follower. different. the clippers seemed like an upstart team. so about the same time Cedric Ceballos went off to the lake for some fun mia, and around the same time Van Exel was off in the corner of the locker room crying when Tyra Banks came in; i was learning Loy, Nesby, Wright, Maurice Taylor, Closs, Barry, Boykins, McInnis and Troy Hudson.

 i was, naively, excited about acquiring such players as; Cherokee Parks, Isaac Austin, Pedrag Drobnjak, Wang Zhi Zhi. I detested Derek Anderson for bad mouthing the team after he left.

I became a fan in 1997 when the Clippers selected Maurice Taylor with the 14th overall pick. Having grown up in Ann Arbor, MI., I used to support all players coming out of Michigan but soon after Mo Taylor arrived so did Q.Rich, D.Miles, etc. Basically, for a young kid, the Clippers made basketball fun whereas the Lakers (and their fans) made the game look like a ritualistic cult that threw tantrums over their heralded players.

Safe to say I made the better decision.

Actually the really interesting thing I remember about that particular divorce was that the woman my client was divorcing was supposedly blind, and at some point in the proceeding not only did we discover she was on a bowling team, but she actually had the high average.

I am a bit curious. Am I the only one curious of his story?

Sometime during the middle of the week, the Clippers had this special deal for 5 dollar seats at the sports arena and the seats weren’t all that bad. My dad, being the great but cheap man i know, only took me to these games as a child. In turn, I never attended a laker game because they were too expensive! I watched every game and although I really liked Chick Hearn (sorry Laker fans) I immediately got attached to Ralph Lawler and PG Gary “the general” Grant. I could go on, like everyone else here but i’ll keep it at that.

Go Clippers!

Yea, that would explain it except it not true.

Winning is too easy, cheering for a team that makes the playoffs once every eight years is more challenging.

It’s pretty funny that most of you guys used to be laker fans, but then switched because you didnt like a particular player on the lakers. That doesn’t make any sense to me. Are you gonna switch again when the clippers get someone you dont like?

Also going against what your friends/everyone else likes just to go against what everyone else likes is just as stupid as conforming to like something because its popular.

As an Angel fan living in LA, I have sympathy for you clipper fans, since both of our teams get overlooked by much bigger/storied franchises with the Dodgers and lakers respectively. But after reading some of these reasons, that sympathy kinda disapeared. For me becoming an Angel’s fan was almost instinctual. I didnt care the Angels were horrible at the time, and the dodgers had all the stars (Nomo, Piazza). The Angels and Me was like love at first sight. Im just as to see almost none of you guys had that same love at first sight experiance with the Clips.

Everyone was a Lakers’ fan and I wanted to be different. So I became a Clippers fan at the age of 10. Some of my favorite moments include:

“With the first pick of the 1998 NBA draft, the Los Angeles Clippers select…Michael Olowkandi from University of the Pacific.” (A move I defended way longer than I should have.)

The D-Miles and Q-Rich youth movement antennae and all.

The improbable, considering the history, playoff run in 2006.

I was a kid living in DC area in the 80’s. I decided in addition to my hometown teams I wanted teams in Western Conferences in all 4 major sports to pull for. I chose all SoCal teams (at least they were at the time). LA Kings, Padres, Raiders, and the Clippers. I moved to Phoenix area in 1990 and saw Clips live for the first time at the Madhouse on McDowell. I actually have become a bigger Clips fan by living in Phoenix. Suns fans make it very easy. I never thought I’d find anyone more annoying than Yankee or Cowboys fans, until I met them. They have a special strain of myopia known as Offense-itis. 2006 was awesome, minus the end result. Just seeing them sweat was fun.

When I started pulling for the Clips it was more about where they were located than them being an underdog. However, over the years, the fact that most people can’t believe I pull for the Clips makes it all the more enjoyable. When the payoff comes down the road (probably after Sterling sells the team when I’m 60) it will be all the sweeter.

The first basketball game I ever went to was a Clippers game, when I was like 6 or 7 years old. I really liked watching Jeff McGinnis, Q, Darius Miles, and Lamar Odom play. Earl Boykins was fun to watch too. I never really hated the Lakers, I just followed and like the Clippers a lot more, because they were so unpredictable.

all my relatives live in boston so they all love the celtics and they hate the lakers, so I already did not like the lakers, I never really liked the celtics either. I ended up becoming a mavs fan because of Steve Nash, and Dirk, once the mavs traded Nash I stopped wathcing basketball because I was young, when I was thirteen I accidentially stumbled upon fsn prime ticket where I witnessed my first clipper game. I was fascinated by how hard elton brand played. They were bad though, but thats why I became a fan because it was all the more satisfying to see a team go from the weak to strong, jumping on the bandwagon when a team is good is so annoying, everyone knows what to expect, that is why I like the clippers because I don’t know what to expect.

I had gotten really into watching NBA basketball during the 2001 play-offs. I remember most of the games. That was the year Vince and the Raptors actually did something by making it to the Conference Semis. Anyway, I’m originally from a town about an hour from LA. Having no teams of our own, obviously, I watched the LA teams. I’ve hated the Lakers ever since, especially Kobe. That was back when everyone droned on and on about his “squeaky clean” image. I hated Kobe when it wasn’t hip to hate Kobe, you know what I mean? I digress though, this about LAC. I was drawn into watching Clipper games. They hardly ever won; it would always seem like they would hang around and then blow it in the last minute. I was hooked though, because they always seemed to try so hard, just never quite make it. They just looked like the total opposite of the Lakers, hard-working guys who just couldn’t catch a break. Till Sam-I-Am that is, damn 2006 was a great year.

so dead sexy such a hard worker, I couldn’t resist.
That’s the way it happened.