Season’s Greetings

Rich team or poor team.

Big names or no-names.

Championship banners on the wall or an empty arena in the playoffs.

Shaq or Vrankovic in the middle.

A new NBA season tips off tonight, but in Los Angeles, despite new faces and new hopes, the choice for fans remains as clear as ever: the perennially contending Lakers or the perennially struggling Clippers.

It’s a comparison the Clippers simply shrug off. What else can they do?

“It’s tough,” Clipper Coach Bill Fitch said. “But to me, it’s the same as if another team was to move to Boston. It doesn’t have anything to do with who we are. It’s a given that the Lakers are going to get more attention.”

Even if the Clippers were to finally become a factor in the postseason?

“It wouldn’t make any difference,” Fitch said. “I expect the Lakers to be the team. They have earned it.”

Said Clipper point guard Darrick Martin: “It doesn’t bother me at all. I actually like it a little bit being the underdog.”

If the Clippers are to be anything more than that, it is Martin who must play a key role beginning tonight when the Clippers open the season at America West Arena in Phoenix against the Suns.

Fitch has decided that the only way to get off to a running start in the 1997-98 season is to do just that, run. He wants his team to kick into a higher gear, to push the opposition by playing an up-tempo game.

“It will be just a little faster version of what we have done in the past,” Martin said. “We’ve got to make things happen, create turnovers. We have to take off every time, try and increase the pressure on the defense.”

It won’t be easy.

For one thing, Martin will be missing the biggest scoring threat from last season’s Clipper backcourt, guard Malik Sealy, who averaged 13.5 points over 80 games. The Clippers renounced the rights to him, opting instead to depend on Brent Barry and Eric Piatkowski to provide the scoring punch.

And provide they must. All the fastbreaks in the world aren’t any good if they don’t end with the ball going into the hoop.

The other problem is on the other end. Fastbreaks don’t even start without good defense, especially in the middle. And for that the Clippers must depend on two large but unproven centers, 7-foot-2 Stojko Vrankovic and 7-3 Keith Closs.

Two important keys to the success of this high-octane offense are guard James Robinson, a free agent whose speed, defensive ability and offensive potential are supposed to earn him sizable chunks of playing time at the point, and Closs, whose size and shot-blocking are supposed to get him on the floor for meaningful moments, perhaps by midseason.

And perhaps both will play key roles down the road.

But both traveled a bumpy road through the preseason.

Robinson, limited by a bone bruise on his right foot, sat out most of training camp, returning only late last week, which enabled him to get in eight minutes in the final exhibition game.

So much for his preseason.

Closs missed a week to attend his grandmother’s funeral, returned last week and then failed to show up for practice Wednesday.

He returned in time to make Thursday’s flight to Phoenix, poorer and wiser and further behind than ever in his progress.

In the Suns, the Clippers will face a team undergoing some changes of its own.

After finishing 40-42 in the regular season last year, fourth in the Pacific Division, and then losing in the first round of the playoffs to the Seattle Supersonics, Phoenix has a different look. Gone are Wayman Tisdale, Wesley Person, Tony Dumas, Ben Davis and Mike Brown. Now in uniform are Antonio McDyess, Cliff Robinson and George McCloud.

“I feel good, anxious, ready,” Martin said. “We are going to try to be explosive [tonight], play run-and-gun up and down the court. If we can do that, we’ll be all right.”

Good enough, perhaps to get off to a fast start.

Good enough maybe to reach the playoffs.

Good enough to overshadow the Lakers?

Uh, let’s not get carried away.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

1997-1998 GAME 1

LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS VS PHOENIX SUNS

NOVEMBER 1, 1997, 7 P.M.

ON THE AIR

TV: Channel 9 (6 PST)

Radio: KEZY-FM (95.9)