As Ralph Lawler Moves Away, So Does LA Clippers’ Link to San Diego

Ralph Lawler broadcast LA Clippers games from their 1978 beginning in San Diego until this year. As he leaves, so do the club’s ties to San Diego.

The LA Clippers as we know them were established in 1984 when they arrived in the City of Angels. But the first team to bear the Clippers name took the court in 1978 down the 5 in America’s Finest City.

It’s an interesting thing, being born and raised in San Diego, and a sports fan. I was a child of the 90s, so we had the Padres and Chargers. But what about basketball? For those of us who loved the sweet science of hoops, we didn’t have a professional team to call our own.   We had the San Diego State Aztecs, and we had some, not all, Clippers and Lakers games on TV.

Back in those days, we weren’t considered a part of either LA team’s market. They did not market in San Diego County, we did not have their games regularly on TV, and the newspapers did not cover them as local teams. This would all change years later. But for now, we relied on the nationally televised games. On the blacktop courts of my elementary school, my friends and I would wear jerseys on Fridays for our pickup games at lunch.

It was a who’s who of the NBA. I had a Larry Bird throwback, my friend Derek a Karl Malone Utah Jazz jersey. My friend Chris, a black pinstriped Michael Jordan. I remember one of the kids we played with had a Jason Kidd Suns jersey. Another, an early Allen Iverson Sixers jersey. The Lakers were not very good, though we knew the names Nick Van Exel and Elden Campbell. The Clippers, well, they were even worse.  The NBA had fans in San Diego. We just didn’t have a team.

I knew from an early age the Clippers had played in San Diego before I was born. It was part of what drew me to them. They were a sports ghost in the city, like the long-gone Rockets, but much more recent, much closer. Our own Ted Leitner, who worked for a long time for the Chargers, and still with the Padres, had broadcast their games. The San Diego Sports Arena, where they played, still stands. Bill Walton, who came to his hometown a savior, and moved north with the club after five injury-plagued seasons in San Diego, still is a prominent sports figure in the area.

The Clippers’ legacy in San Diego is short, uneventful, and mostly forgotten. But it’s a “what if?” for a city who has seen its fair share. Namely, what if Donald Sterling never came?  Yes, that Donald Sterling.

It all started when Irv Levin owned the Boston Celtics. Levin, a Hollywood resident, wanted to own a team in Southern California. It was apparent the league wouldn’t move one of their flagship franchises, so Levin arranged a franchise swap with the Buffalo Braves. Levin took the Braves to San Diego, and John Y. Brown took over the Celtics.  The Clippers were born, a tribute to the sailing ships of San Diego’s harbor.

Levin, accustomed to success with his ventures in the film industry, and with the Celtics, grew tired of failing on the court and financially with the Clippers. The move to sign Walton had proven disastrous, and Levin looked to sell. Interestingly, the first deal was made to Nike CEO Phil Knight, but it quickly fell apart, leading Levin to sell to eccentric Los Angeles attorney Donald T. Sterling in 1981. Sterling promised the team would be well-funded, a winner, and would remain in San Diego.  Their most memorable act under Sterling would be drafting San Diego State’s electric point guard, Tony Gwynn, who would choose to play baseball instead.

Of course, this lasted until 1984, when Sterling grew tired of traveling from his Los Angeles home for games, and moved, against the wishes of the NBA and the other owners, to Los Angeles. The first of many red flags of the Sterling era ended the NBA in San Diego, and showed the character of one of its worst owners.

In Los Angeles, there were few reminders of the San Diego origins of the Clippers. The name remained, still valid near the Pacific Ocean in Los Angeles. Under Sterling, the Clippers adopted their familiar royal blue and red colors and the logo they would have for the next two and a half decades, leaving the powder blue and orange associated with San Diego a memory.

But Ralph Lawler remained. Lawler, the Clippers broadcaster from their first game in San Diego until the end of this past season, is arguably the most famous face in the history of the franchise. For a team that disappointed on the court for so long, had ownership the fans despised, and endured constant change in coaches and players, Ralph was a comforting voice, welcoming presence, and indeed the glue holding together the history of the franchise for a loyal fanbase who has been tested and tried countless times since 1978.

Indeed, even in the tribute to Lawler, the video montage included footage of the San Diego Sports Arena, of World B. Free, and his broadcast partner, Bill Walton. For a day, the San Diego Clippers lived again, as they had when the team’s city edition uniforms the year before had revived the color scheme of San Diego days past.

As Ralph Lawler retires to Oregon, the Clippers and their fans have lost the only constant in years of change, and heartache. But he does so at a time when the future is brightest for the Clippers. And he does so at a time when all 82 games are broadcast in San Diego.

If you’re like me, Ralph was the living legacy of what could’ve been. We wonder if under different ownership, the Clippers could’ve stayed. Regardless, hope abounds that they can now take over LA under Steve Ballmer. But those ghosts are persistent if you look in the right places. At a San Diego Gulls game, my first time inside the old San Diego Sports Arena, one could not help but notice the massive photo of Bill Walton posting up Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The city abounds with small reminders of the time the Clippers were our team.

Ralph Lawler retiring ends the Clippers’ link to their time in San Diego, but, maybe, just maybe, the Clippers can become San Diego’s team once and for all, by signing the greatest player in San Diego State history, Kawhi Leonard.