“We have two players who have never been a part of this team.”The Clippers’ game against the Knicks, a team last competitive during the administration of James Garfield, was a free-shooting affair. An usher pointed at a seat near courtside.

“You want to beat every good team,” the insurance adjuster told me.I sidled up to Rivers and heard something more satisfying. The Lakers were stunned 115-101 by the Golden State Warriors in another humbling without LeBron James on court. Nothing crazy was said. 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 don’t even ask them, because I’m afraid of their answers.”Rivers, 58, is a quick-to-laugh boulevardier; Frank Vogel, 46, the Lakers coach, affects the persona of an insurance adjuster. 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 Toronto — 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: Boooooooooo.I hopped in a car and drove through sun-washed Los Angeles (Note to my editor: Yes, I suggested this story in January for a reason) in search of incipient Clipper love.

The miserable performance led to … “That one was $180 for the Clippers,” he said. As Leonard is rarely heard, and George — who also is Did you put too much pressure on your veteran Patrick Beverley by asking him to play the unaccustomed role of point guard? “It’s $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. I nosed south toward working- and middle-class Inglewood, where the Clippers plan to build Ray Guidos stopped bouncing his basketball, squinted and shook his head at that fool question.“Man, you’re going to have trouble finding Clippers,” he explained, though by then I didn’t need an explanation. See today's front and back pages, download the newspaper, Center Dwight Howard, whose egocentrism has caused him to cycle through six teams in the last eight years, ran around tossing up his arms in mock LeBron style, claiming the role of court jester.The team took the floor against the Pistons with a Globetrotter-like spin and whirl, behind the back passes and soaring blocks.

He rarely plays on consecutive nights, a strategy 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. championship contenders this season. “It’s Lakers, Lakers, Lakers.”I drove on and pulled into a parking lot less than a mile from the site of the proposed arena and chatted with Ray Guevara, a young security guard outside a Ross Dress for Less. But the Knicks, no one’s idea of an offensive juggernaut, scored 69 points in the first half. 8 NBA Locker Room Fights You Did Not Know About includes NBA fights 2019, NBA fights LeBron James & more NBA Players in this list! Los Angeles has two N.B.A. “It’s a sign of disrespect.”Clippers fans were not too hard to find, though.

A reporter might have thought he was poking at the coach.“Yeah, that was stupid, terrible coaching!” he said.After the game, the Clippers banners rolled up and that flotilla of gold-and-purple Lakers championship banners once again floated free. Anger gives you that extra juice.”Cool. “We’re not there yet but we might get it in the playoffs.

Following the Lakers’ 115-101 loss to the Golden State Warriors on Saturday night in Oakland, several veteran members of the Lakers had an “emotionally charged” verbal confrontation with … The Clippers played in the afternoon against the hapless (a needless adjective) Knicks, and the Lakers took the gym back that evening for a game against the Detroit Pistons. A day earlier, the Clippers dropped a game to the pitiful Pistons, and Clippers center Montrezl Harrell, a burly dreadlocked Range Rover of a man, sounded as if he had had enough.“We’re not a great team — you have to get out of your mind,” he told us. "The ball movement, it's natural when guys, if the other team is on a run or they step up their defence, to try to go 1-on-1.“But that just makes the other team's defence better. The Lakers were stunned 115-101 by the Golden State Warriors in another humbling without LeBron James on court.The miserable performance led to Luke Walton slamming the players in the locker room.It is understood senior members of the squad then clashed with the head coach.So what actually happened? That’s the thing I liked.”That was soon enough of that. “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 advantage, as the men came of age on the exurban jack-rabbit desert fringes to which so many working-class Los Angeles-area families have been consigned by the economics of a city as grossly expensive as New York.But street cred buys only so much love. In the N.B.A., admiration is expressed through creative theft.George finished with 32 points. The Lakers, the Clippers and a Rare Fight for L.A. Basketball Primacy. championship.That might sound like a Hollywood-scripted battle for the heart of this city, but that would be to overstate. Camera people and reporters formed a half-moon around the locker of LeBron James, who 20 minutes later wandered out of the shower, his scalp wrapped in This aging star cradled a Bose speaker and combed out his beard as he sang along to the rapper Drake: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. Could the Clippers and the Lakers ignite something as insanely tribal as the old Celtics-Lakers rivalry, that war of six decades’ vintage?I put the question to Vogel.

No one was disrespected. How the Lakers locker room must've went down after the fight with the Rockets Ingram had to have thought he was that n**** after everything went down!