Alexander: Relocated Lakers vs. Clippers rivalry still entertains

If you’re a Lakers or Clippers fan, I don’t blame you if you feel like you’ve been robbed.

Under normal circumstances, the road to the NBA championship would have already run through Staples Center. In the pre-pandemic Western Conference, L.A.’s teams were 1-2, and either could make a convincing case for its championship credentials. The Lakers were 49-14, had polished off Milwaukee and the Clippers on the final weekend before the suspension of play, and LeBron James was assembling a serious MVP resume. The Clippers were 44-20, had won their first two meetings with the Lakers, and were looking forward to finally having a full roster operating at full efficiency.

And yes, the rest of the West might have had something to say about it, but we fully expected the Western Conference Finals to take place in downtown Los Angeles, start to finish, followed by the eighth NBA Finals in Staples’ 21 seasons of existence.

Instead, for reasons that are obvious and understood, we have digitized fans shown on video boards ringing a TV studio of a court in Orlando. (Would that be what bots look like?) And instead of home-court advantage and the organic crowd interaction that can push a team over the top, we have an environment where players will have to provide their own emotion and intensity, and where the grind to a championship over the next three months will be of a nature these players have never experienced.

But there is this: The surroundings may be weird, and the environment of the bubble may resemble an AAU summer tournament for grown men, as LeBron James put it, but when the Lakers play the Clippers the intensity does not need to be manufactured at all.

“Two teams in the same city, and two teams that’s fighting for one common goal, and that’s to win a championship and bring it to the city of Los Angeles and their respective fan base,” James said in a teleconference interview Thursday night, after his putback of his own miss with 12.8 seconds left helped give the Lakers a 103-101 triumph on NBA Opening Night II.

“There’s so many competitors on the floor, going out there and representing the purple and gold, representing Laker Nation,” he said. “And those guys are doing the same thing for their fan base. No matter what the cause is, no matter what the bubble is, no fans or fans, basketball is basketball and competitive spirit is competitive spirit. We got right back to where we left off.”

Lakers-Clippers truly became an Event, with a capital E, the moment Kawhi Leonard and Paul George came aboard.  That was almost certainly the impetus behind its marquee status on the first night of the NBA’s re-start in Orlando. And while it didn’t always seem like marquee-type basketball early on – lots of missed shots, and lots of ragged play – it was the type of show we’ve come to expect from these teams, who now have split four regular-season meetings, are 1-2 in the Western Conference and, barring a hiccup when the playoffs start, should be staring each other down in the conference finals.

So, can you blame SoCal for feeling just a little bit cheated?

What promised from the start to be a special basketball season in L.A. was paused for a period of civic grief and mourning after Kobe Bryant’s death in late February, was halted again in March by the coronavirus and now will finish on the other side of the country. A state of the art football stadium will likely open with no fans in the seats – if the NFL season actually does start on time – and even the return of HBO’s Hard Knocks to cover the Rams and Chargers will be watered down. And what could be a special baseball season likewise will take place in empty stadiums, if indeed it finishes at all.

(But at least Mookie’s signed for 12 years. Take that, Boston.)

So if this rivalry is to reach its logical conclusion, we will watch on TV, as we did Thursday night. And while players assume nothing and profess their priority is to take care of their own business – or, as Anthony Davis said, “I’m worried about one team, and that’s the Lakers” – it never hurts to send a message, even in the “seeding games” portion of the re-start that would seem to mean more for the teams battling for playoff spots than for those closer to the top of the standings.

“We’re going to create that intensity on our own,” George said earlier in the day in a teleconference. “It’s a great way to kick off the re-start, matching up against our biggest rival, our biggest competitor to reach our biggest goal of the season.”

George contributed to the roller-coaster nature of the game. The Clippers trailed by 13 in the first half, took an 11-point lead early in the third quarter thanks to back-to-back-to-back three-pointers by George in the first three minutes of the second half … and had that lead wiped out 5 1/2 minutes after that.

At Staples, those developments would have been met with roars. With the digital pod people on the big screens, who could tell?

“Obviously there’s still more quiet than we’re used to with our fans, particularly for a home game or a game of this magnitude when we play these games in L.A.,” Lakers coach Frank Vogel said.

“The way these two teams are built, they’re both championship caliber teams in the same city. So we know there’s going to be a lot of drama around that. And it’s great for the league to see these franchises go head to head.”

Remember, this is just the appetizer.

“We’re in this for the long haul,” George said, and I’m guessing the guys on the other side would agree completely.

So would the fans on both sides. Too bad their noses are going to be pressed against the glass.

jalexander@scng.com

@Jim_Alexander on Twitter