Bob Cook

The Los Angeles Clippers’ franchise-record 10-4 start, including a 5-1 start at home, is no accident. It’s the result of meticulous planning, thorough talent evaluation and judicious spending.

You know, the sort of things never before associated with the Los Angeles Clippers.

History shows that when the Clippers reach the rarefied air of being over .500, they crash like skydivers without a parachute, eventually landing with a thud for their usual 15 to 30 wins. After all, the Clippers, who have lost about two out of every three games since moving to California from Buffalo in 1978, are pro sports’ standard-bearer for futility mixed with incompetence leavened with bad luck. To be a Clippers fan is to be the sort of person who, when choosing a puppy to adopt out of a litter, always picks the runt.

But something seems different this time. The lack-of-brain-trust that is chintzy owner Donald Sterling and talent de-evaluator Elgin Baylor have for the last two years, in one of the greatest sports upsets ever, acted like a supportive owner and a shrewd general manager. They've made the right deals to create one of the best young frontcourts in the NBA in Elton Brand (age 26), Chris Kaman (23) and Corey Maggette (23), and paired them with a savvy veteran backcourt in Sam Cassell (36) and Cuttino Mobley (30), both acquired this offseason.

Instead of being just cheap, the Clippers are now thrifty — their $49 million payroll for 2005-06 ranks only 26th out of 32 NBA teams.

Sterling, owner since 1981, and Baylor, GM since 1986, have played pivotal roles in the Clippers losing about two out of every three games in their California existence. So one of two things had to happen to turn the team around. Either aliens kidnapped Sterling and Baylor and replaced them with pod people who want to use the Clippers' unusual success as a distraction while they put forth their plan for Earth's domination, or someone finally convinced Sterling and Baylor that it was time their team become something other than a joke.

While the aliens/pod people scenario seems far more plausible, the Clippers' turnaround is actually because of the latter. That's in part thanks to current coach Mike Dunleavy who did what Baylor-era coaches Don Chaney, Gene Shue, Don Casey, Mike Schuler, Mack Calvin, Bob Weiss, Bill Fitch, Chris Ford, Jim Todd and Alvin Gentry could not — wring out of Sterling and Baylor a long-term commitment to winning. Even Larry Brown, who led the Clippers to two of their three playoff appearances, couldn't do that.

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Dunleavy's powers of persuasion may have been assisted by Sterling and Baylor getting tired of watching their teams full of top 10 picks keep flaming out in a sea of injury, selfishness, ennui, stupidity and apathy. The Clippers have had 20 top 10 picks since 1978. One — Danny Manning in 1993 — has made the All-Star game. He’s also the last All-Star the Clippers have had. The Clippers' official team history declared the 1999-2000 squad of Lamar Odom, Michael Olowokandi, Derek Anderson, Tyrone Nesby and Maurice Taylor to have been that season's "arguably... largest collection of 'he's-got-great-upside' players." It finished 15-67.

And also, maybe Sterling got tired of having the reputation of being too cheap to pay anybody who showed some flashes of ability, what with deals such as trading Michael Cage after he won the 1988 rebounding title, or Manning the season after he made the All-Star team. As further evidence, the Clippers kept Benoit Benjamin for six-and-a-half years.

Whatever the reasons, in 2003 Sterling and Baylor saw the light. That was at a time when, coming off a 27-55 season, Brand, Maggette, Odom, Olowokandi, Andre Miller and Eric Piatkowski all entered free agency. In past years, the Clippers would have signed none of them. In 2003, they signed two — the right two, Brand and Maggette. Sterling matched a six-year, $84 million offer from Miami for Brand, and a six-year, $42 million offer from Utah for Maggette. At the time, they looked pricey.

Now they're bargains.

Since entering the league as the No. 1 pick in the 1999 draft by the Bulls, Brand has been a consistent 20-point, 10-rebound per night player. (He also is one of the few times Baylor has fleeced another team, getting Brand even-up for Tyson Chandler in 2001.) In an age when most big men like to shoot from anywhere except the paint, Brand shoots from nowhere else, making him a consistent top-20 league leader in field-goal percentage and offensive rebounding. Maggette, meanwhile, developed into a 20-point-per-game scorer in his own right after signing his big contract.