THE NBA / MARK HEISLER : Clippers Blew Chance for NBA Immortality

So, nobody’s perfect.

Staring immortality in the face, the Clippers blinked.

Apparently locked into a rendezvous with a destiny that seemed to have been waiting for them since Donald T. Sterling first met Danny Manning, or since Sterling heard of professional basketball, the Clippers did the improbable.

They won. Imagine that.

“I told ‘em, ‘Bring your cameras. When you get it done, when you get that monkey off your back, it’ll be the ugliest and the biggest and there won’t be enough bananas to feed it, so get out of its way,’ ” Coach Bill Fitch said before the game.

If Fitch’s players forgot their cameras, it’s OK. Everyone else brought theirs.

As Clipper players mobbed Pooh Richardson, and the crowd of about 4,500, pumped up to 6,433 for the official announcement, screamed like 45,000, five minicam crews danced around the fringes.

Clipper coaches and players, mostly recent arrivals, are innocents in this play, which is more about Sterling’s front office, but they were the ones who had been forced to shoulder the ridicule. The Donald could multiply their pay by 10 and still not be even.

The first four weeks of the season were their nightmare. Wednesday was their Game 7 of the NBA finals.

“Never,” said Harold Ellis, asked if he had been through anything similar.

“Nowhere. I had a little league football team, we forfeited one, lost six and tied three. But we did have that one. . . . “

Teams had gone through bad times but at least the record-smashing 9-73 76ers of 1972-73 didn’t have to put up with smart-aleck anchors on ESPN. In the era of 500 channels, ridicule weighs heavily on one.

“I just told the guys, ‘If reading the papers bothers you, don’t read ‘em. If watching TV or listening to the radio bothers you--just don’t let that extra baggage that goes with something like this get too heavy for you,’ ” Fitch said.

Of course, this might cut a few things out of your life.

Malik Sealy says he quit reading the paper when he was in high school. He still catches a glimpse of TV here and there, but lately he has been careful.

“I might catch some highlights, but when they start talking about us, I turn it off,” Sealy said. “I might catch some college highlights.”

Let’s just say they needed this night badly.

So did the Bucks, losers of eight in a row. One could say the Clippers beat a road-weary team, tottering into its fourth game in five nights, but the Bucks are also one of the NBA’s promising young franchises, with several fine young players and one budding superstar.

“Anybody coming in here is going to think the same thing,” said Coach Mike Dunleavy before the game. “You don’t want to be the first to be beaten by the Clippers, but we can’t think about that. We need a win desperately.”

So Wednesday was desperate.

The Clippers led by 13 midway through the third quarter.

The Bucks went on a 10-0 run at the end of the quarter.

The Clippers opened it up to 81-72 midway through the fourth quarter.

The Bucks closed to 88-85 in the closing seconds, then tied the score when Glenn Robinson, the budding superstar, rebounded his own missed 10-footer, took the ball out to the three-point line and canned one from there.

The Clippers led, 94-92, in the last 30 seconds of overtime.

Robinson got caught up in the air, passed up a wide-open 15-footer to tie, lost the ball . . . and saw teammate Marty Conlon pick it up in the lane, score and draw a foul.

Somewhere in here, the gods must have decided they were tired of torturing the Clippers. Conlon missed the free throw. Richardson turned a busted play at the Clipper end into the dramatic game-winner.

The Clippers may not be the best team that ever came down the pike, but at least they wouldn’t make any history this night. They deserved that much, at least.