Los Angeles Clippers Basketball Team

Private developers offered Wednesday to replace the Los Angeles Sports Arena with a $100-million indoor arena for the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, a deal that casts a cloud over competing plans for similar facilities in Santa Ana and Anaheim. Two of the three financial backers of the proposed Los Angeles arena--MCA Inc. and Spectacor Management Group--also are involved in the financing of a proposed $85-million arena in Santa Ana.

Shaquille O'Neal traveled here with the Lakers, more than two hours by bus Tuesday, for their exhibition opener. He said once again that he has no idea when he will play after undergoing toe surgery on Sept. 11. He said he hopes to begin light jogging next week. Then (surprise!) he grew playful before the Lakers' 101-99 loss to the Clippers before a sellout crowd of 10,097 at Centennial Garden. "I'm going to kick your ...

Bill Fitch begins spinning yarns almost immediately. He slides into a booth on the patio of a restaurant near the basketball arena, wearing rose-tinted glasses and a shirt with "L.A. Clippers" on the pocket. (Perfect.) The new coach of the Clippers is the old coach of practically everybody else, so as a storyteller his only real challenge is where to start.

I walked into the penthouse reception prepared to skewer Donald Sterling. But I had barely gotten through the door when I wound up in a group hug with the Clippers' owner and the NBA's top draft pick, heartthrob Blake Griffin. Sterling might be a tight-fisted egomaniac, but he's also smart enough to know that it's hard to savage a man in print when he introduces you to the crowd as the "beautiful, fabulous writer for the Los Angeles Times. Here to make life better for underprivileged kids."

Steve Blake tied an NBA record for assists in one quarter when he handed out 14 during the first period in the Portland Trail Blazers' 116-87 win over the Clippers on Sunday. San Antonio's John Lucas set the record of 14 assists during the second quarter against Denver on April 15, 1984. "I took a peek and saw I was getting up there, so I was happy guys kept making shots for me," Blake said. "When it comes to assists, your teammates have to make shots, and they did that for me."

Pamela Kaman can recount all the times she struggled with her son, Clippers center Chris Kaman, to get him to take his medication while he was growing up. It was a hassle. Chris Kaman was an intelligent, but rambunctious, youth. "There was constant uproar with him," Pamela Kaman said. "You couldn't do normal things. You couldn't go to the movies as a family. It would always turn into a big thing."

Donald T. Sterling bought the landmark former MGM headquarters in the heart of Beverly Hills, furnishing rooms with French antiques and restoring the detailed bronze elevator doors, sculpted wood wall moldings and parquet floors. But when posh retailer Barneys of New York wanted to lease the choice ground-level space from him, the Los Angeles Clippers owner refused. Except for his own offices on the top two floors, the building he calls Sterling World Plaza is completely empty.

Ron Harper, former shooting guard on the Clippers' chain gang, couldn't wait to get out. "Just doing my jail time," inmate Harper complained in February as he marked off calendar dates until he was "freed" this season to sign a $19-million contract with the Chicago Bulls. Orlando Vega, former shooting guard for Sandstone Federal Correctional, couldn't wait to get in. Last week, he signed a free-agent contract with the Clippers.

Only the Clippers, it seems, could be involved in a fight in which a fair outcome is unattainable, and a rooting interest is impossible. It's Elgin Baylor suing Donald Sterling, a fallen general manager charging the falling owner of being racist and cheap, allegations that apparently occurred to Baylor only after working there for more than two decades. One cannot pick sides, only emotions. Sadness comes to mind. How do you back an owner who is now fighting two lawsuits accusing him of racism?

Perhaps signaling a downturn in the local concert business, the Clippers signed a long-term lease extension to continue playing in Staples Center. Tim Leiweke, the arena's chief executive, was quoted this month as saying that Staples Center would make more money from five concerts than it would from a season of Clipper games. But rather than rely on future tours by acts such as the Rolling Stones and Prince, the president of Anschutz Entertainment Group stayed in business with the Clippers.