|
|
In 1984 the Clippers basketball team moved to Los Angeles , California , playing in the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena while the LA Lakers, with a better reputation, continued to play at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood , a few miles south. The Los Angeles Clippers were totally overshadowed by their cross-town counterparts, who were in the midst of a championship run with future Hall of Famers, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and James Worthy. The Clippers, under head coach Jim Lynam (and later Don Chaney) and new acquisitions Marques Johnson, Junior Bridgeman, and Harvey Catchings (all acquired via trade from the Milwaukee Bucks), finished with a disappointing 31-51 record in the earliest season in the City of Angels.
The next seven seasons (from 1985-92), the Los Angeles Clippers were mired in ineffectiveness, including a 12-70 record in the 1986-87 season, the third-worst single-season record in Basketball history. That fussy season was filled with injuries to both Marques Johnson and guard Norm Nixon, who missed most, if not the entire, season. That NBA season also brought in Hall of Famer Elgin Baylor as the team's vice president and general manager of basketball operations, a post he presently holds (2005). In the 1989-90 season, Baylor made a trade with the Cleveland Cavaliers that brought Ron Harper, a rising star guard, in a trade for forward Danny Ferry (who refused to play for the Clippers) and swingman Reggie Williams. That move, along with the 1987 draft of Ken Norman from the University of Illinois, the 1988 draftings of University of Kansas forward Danny Manning and Charles Smith from the University of Pittsburgh, and the 1990 draft of Loy Vaught from the University of Michigan shaped a nucleus that led the Los Angeles Clipper franchise to a play-off appearance in 1992, the first since 1976 when the team was still in Buffalo.
. |
|
|
