'Novak for the win," Ralph Lawler says, his deep voice climbing up the sound ladder with each syllable, in perfect rhythm with Steve Novak's three-point shot as it arcs and settles into the net.
As time runs out, there is Lawler's voice, sweet sounding as any symphony, musical and exuberant and just so heartfelt.
BIIIIINNNGOOO.
It is as if the Clippers won the NBA title, a surprise release of joy, the signature one-word exclamation of childlike wonder from this 70-year-old play-by-play man who has seen much more losing than winning, with a team that makes an NBA season feel like years instead of months.
In fact, this win over the New Jersey Nets last month was just the Clippers' 16th.
Bob Miller, the hockey Hall of Fame broadcaster for the Kings, says there is no harder job than calling the action of an awful team, game after game, minute after endless minute.
Lawler has been doing that for the Clippers for 30 years, but the losses -- 1,583 -- have not defeated him.
Straight-backed and broad-shouldered, with a tan perfected by the desert sun at his La Quinta home, Lawler loves being the voice of the Clippers, who are 19-62 with one game left. Only his white hair and mustache hint at his age. Before a recent game, he walks around Staples Center with steps so long -- he's 6-foot-2 -- that people have to run to catch up. He is looking forward to the next four hours because, he says, the Clippers still could win.
"It's always more fun to do the winning broadcast, of course," he says. "But there's a certain satisfaction in knowing that you're prepared whether they win or lose."
The losses he knows well. One dismal season after another, the Clippers have closed out April with a string of losses more often than not.
For good teams the month of April is usually about fighting for a playoff spot or fine-tuning for a title run. Usually for the Clippers, that isn't the case. Between the 1982-83 season and last season, the Clippers were a woeful 80-174 in April. On Monday night they lost again, making them 1-6 this month, their playoff hopes long gone. After tonight's game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Clippers will just be glad the season is over.
Yet, every April, there is Lawler, studying his notes, checking the stats, finding what he refers to as "interesting tidbits" for his viewers.
He may be the voice of losing in a world where winning is everything, but you wouldn't know it listening to him.
