Dunleavy said he thought Baylor was in agreement on both deals, but couldn't recall for sure. He suggested calling Baylor.
"We discussed those deals and Dunleavy knows that," Baylor said. "Once I knew Maggette wanted to be here and I believed we could sign Maggette [at the end of this season], I wanted to keep him here."
As for Udrih, Baylor said, "It didn't make a difference to me" whether the Clippers signed him.
Put it all together, and internally the Clippers appear to be a mess, with Dunleavy implying it would be best if everyone just got out of the way and allowed him to plot the team's future.
"We are in a great situation as long as basketball people around here make the basketball decisions," Dunleavy said. "As long as I am here, I'll take full responsibility for it, and I guarantee you everybody is going to be happy."
Dunleavy said everything was going just fine for the Clippers, which means everyone was listening to him, until he pushed Sterling into spending $55 million on a contract extension for Chris Kaman.
"I went to bat for Kaman, [Sterling] stepped up to pay the money to get him, then last year Kaman got injured early, and while he didn't have a great year, he didn't have a terrible year," Dunleavy said. "But based on that, they stopped drinking the Kool-Aid and some suggestions and some of the things that I wanted to go forward with, we didn't do."
An improved Kaman now appears worth the big money, re-enforcing Dunleavy's contention that he knows what he's doing, which puts him in direct conflict with Sterling.
Sterling invited Baylor to join the Monday interview, and then said he expected better out of Dunleavy and Baylor, or changes will be made. As part of that discussion, he says he expects Baylor to do what he can to acquire a good player before the trading deadline, a player with the potential to turn the Clippers' season around.
Dunleavy found that almost laughable. "Are we getting Kobe, Dwyane Wade or LeBron James? I would agree with that, but even with those guys right now, we'd have to go [something like] 34-10 to make the playoffs.
"I would only make deals to help our future -- anything else is suicide. Anything else and you become the New York Knicks. Now if you want to do that and take on big contracts and long-term deals to potentially hit a home run or get some kind of turnaround, that's not the direction I would go as a businessman or if I owned the team."
