135: The Curse of the Clippers – With Mick Minas
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English - October 21, 2019 08:00 - 1 hour - 140 MB - ★★★★★ - 98 ratingsSports History hockey soccer sports volleyball baseball basketball defunct football nostalgia Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
We pick up where we left off in Episode 89 (The NBA Buffalo Braves – With Tim Wendel), with the continuing story of one of pro hoops’ most forlorn franchises – today known as the Los Angeles Clippers.
Author Mick Minas (The Curse: The Colorful & Chaotic History of the LA Clippers) joins the podcast from his home in Melbourne, Australia to help us go deep into the travails of a club labeled by many as the NBA’s most historically dysfunctional – and by some as simply cursed.
From its highly convoluted cross-country relocation to San Diego in 1978 to its still-chaotic life as Los Angeles’ “other” NBA team (and the Staples Center’s third-priority sports tenant) – the Clippers have had enough wayward turns of fate to fill an entire league, let alone a single franchise:
The high-profile 1979 coup of All-Star center (and San Diego native) Bill Walton, whose career literally and figuratively crumbled under the weight of chronic foot injuries;
League fines, investigations and lawsuits against team owner Donald Sterling – including the team’s unauthorized relocation to Los Angeles in 1984;
The “Clipper Triangle” of injuries to star players like Derek Smith, Norm Nixon, Marques Johnson, and Danny Manning – and league-record setting seasons of futility;
The disruption of the club’s first playoff appearance in 1992 by the Los Angeles riots;
Siren songs of Anaheim; AND
The sordid 2014 scandal that led to Sterling’s ouster and subsequent/still-in-process “rebirth” under new owner Steve Ballmer.
PLUS: Will the Clippers stay in LA?
We pick up where we left off in Episode 89 (The NBA Buffalo Braves – With Tim Wendel), with the continuing story of one of pro hoops’ most forlorn franchises – today known as the Los Angeles Clippers.
Author Mick Minas (The Curse: The Colorful & Chaotic History of the LA Clippers) joins the podcast from his home in Melbourne, Australia to help us go deep into the travails of a club labeled by many as the NBA’s most historically dysfunctional – and by some as simply cursed.
From its highly convoluted cross-country relocation to San Diego in 1978 to its still-chaotic life as Los Angeles’ “other” NBA team (and the Staples Center’s third-priority sports tenant) – the Clippers have had enough wayward turns of fate to fill an entire league, let alone a single franchise:
The high-profile 1979 coup of All-Star center (and San Diego native) Bill Walton, whose career literally and figuratively crumbled under the weight of chronic foot injuries;
League fines, investigations and lawsuits against team owner Donald Sterling – including the team’s unauthorized relocation to Los Angeles in 1984;
The “Clipper Triangle” of injuries to star players like Derek Smith, Norm Nixon, Marques Johnson, and Danny Manning – and league-record setting seasons of futility;
The disruption of the club’s first playoff appearance in 1992 by the Los Angeles riots;
Siren songs of Anaheim; AND
The sordid 2014 scandal that led to Sterling’s ouster and subsequent/still-in-process “rebirth” under new owner Steve Ballmer.
PLUS: Will the Clippers stay in LA?