[b]Clippers' ship lost in a fog
Helmsman Sterling steers team in circles[/b]
By Peter May
Globe Staff / March 2, 2008

Tick. Tick. Tick.

That is the sound of the Los Angeles Clippers who, once again, appear to be on the verge of implosion. The coach and the owner aren't talking. The owner says the coach picks the players, then rejects a trade. One player (Sam Cassell) is leaving. Two others (Corey Maggette and Elton Brand) have a choice to leave.

It was a pretty remarkable scene last Monday night in the press room of Staples Center. After the Celtics had clobbered an undermanned, overmatched, and generally listless Clipper bunch, team owner Donald Sterling was standing alone, talking on his cellphone. When he hung up, I approached him along with another reporter, Art Thompson of the Orange County Register.

What transpired over the next 10 minutes or so qualifies as, well, Clipperesque. Sterling was congenial, conversational, and, as far as the two of us could tell, utterly clueless as to what was going on with Cassell. Sterling reminded us he was a lawyer. Yet he claimed to know nothing about a buyout (I had been told after the game that it was all but completed) nor, he added, did he know how a buyout worked.

A few years ago, the Globe ran excerpts of a deposition that Sterling gave in a lawsuit filed by Bill Fitch, and Sterling's responses drew guffaws everywhere. He said he had no input in basketball matters. He said he didn't know his players. This conversation last Monday tended to ratify that, except, of course, that Thompson and I both knew that Sterling had nixed a deal for Mike Miller at the trade deadline because it would have involved giving up LA's No. 1 pick. Sterling doesn't so much care about the pick as he does about the monetary value assigned to that pick - around 10 to 15 percent of what Miller makes.

So, OK, maybe the owner Sterling didn't know Cassell was on the verge of a buyout (although it was all over the papers). And maybe the lawyer Sterling didn't understand the whys and wherefores of a buyout. Hard to believe, but, OK.

Then, when the conversation turned to the Clippers' terrible performance, Sterling went off on coach Mike Dunleavy. It was pretty similar to what he said a few weeks back, blaming Dunleavy for the selection of players and saying that Dunleavy, not general manager Elgin Baylor, had the final say on every player on the roster. Every single one. Why, Sterling wondered, if the players were picked by the coach, did they not play for the coach?

When Thompson reminded Sterling that the better days had been only two years ago, Sterling said yes, he knew, then remarked quickly that it was those better days that led to the $20 million-plus contract extension he bestowed on Dunleavy. Another sigh.

It is not stop-the-presses stuff that Sterling can be difficult, especially when it comes to deals. As his former general manager Carl Scheer once said, "Dealing with Sterling was impossible. If he took the elevator down, he'd ask the operator what he thought and by the time he had reached the lobby, he had changed his mind. It was utter frustration."

That's what happened with the Cassell buyout. All sides had agreed to the deal Monday night. But if Sterling was telling the truth and really didn't know anything about it (hard to believe), then that might explain why everything came to a halt Tuesday. Outside observers expected the Cassell thing to go down to the final minute yesterday, but, amazingly, it was done on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the Dunleavy-Sterling dynamic is not good. Several sources said the two have not spoken in weeks. On paper, when healthy, the Clippers can field a decent starting five (Brand, Maggette, Chris Kaman, Cuttino Mobley, and Shaun Livingston) and a decent bench (Tim Thomas, Brevin Knight, Al Thornton). But they're not healthy, and there's no indication who will be back next year. And the Lakers are indisputably back on top in LA, something that also irks Sterling.

Dunleavy, however, seems secure. Sterling won't fire him with all that money on the table. But Dunleavy didn't fall off the turnip truck, either. He knew the ways of The Donald when he signed on. Looking back, it's pretty stunning that it took so long for all this to surface. Dunleavy is finishing his fifth year as coach. In Clipper lore, that makes him Cal Ripken.