The Lawler Effect

“Don’t insult our intelligence and tell us everything is fine, when we know it’s not.  Positivity is great.  Naivete or make-believe?  Not so much.”

This is a quote from Ric Bucher on his chat this week in response to a question about George Karl’s upbeat assessment of ‘Melo staying with Denver.  But it applies to our beloved announcer as well.

Now, we all know the problem with this organization is Sterling/Roeser and of course, not our beloved positive announcer of 32 sad years.  But it merits discussion.

The primary reasons I became a massive Clipper fan when I moved to LA in ’91 was because (a) I hated the Lakers (b) The Clippers were here and, hey, I could afford – and get – tickets and (c) I loved listening to Ralph Lawler and I believed him when he said that if we were just patient with our young core of Danny Manning, Ken Norman and Loy Vaught, the wait would be worth it – the future was bright.  Plus the team had money to spend to go and get free agents.

Needless to say, after 20 years of the exact same message – through five cycles of different groups of young players, first the aforementioned, then… (Taylor, Murray, Wright, Anderson); (Brand, Maggette, Miles/Miller, Odom, Q. Rich, Dooling); (Kaman and Thornton); (Griffin, EJ, Bledsoe), I hope you’ll forgive me if I tell you, I’ve grown a wee bit tad tired of the act.  How many times can one human being hear various versions of ‘patience, future, capspace’?

So, here’s the question – does Ralph’s constant selling us the hope Kool-Aid help the team, hinder the team, or have zero impact?

I think it both helps and hurts the team.  It helps the team, because there is a constant infusion of new fans who are attracted to the team.  His positive outlook is infectious.  His banter during the game is charming – and he is – without question – the best home team play-by-play man in the business.  (In 2003 when Sterling refused to sign a deal with a local network to broadcast Clipper games [hypocritically because he felt the value of the deal should be predicated on the potential viewership of the team — the exact same arugment that the young players were making with him and he was refuting in contract negotiations], I purchased the NBA package and watched every game on the other team’s network.  Believe me, when I say Ralph is the league’s best home team play-by-play man.  Mike Smith was the second best color commentator, but I digress).  Ralph describes the action beautifully, knows when to change and amp up the cadence (as opposed the Chick Hearn who did not understand the art of changing cadence – it was like listening to a horse-race for 2 hours with him) and has the added bonus of being gifted with a beautiful baritone voice.  All of this makes the team attractive to new – mostly younger – fans, who want an alternative to the Lakers and who like rooting for the underdog.

But Ralph also hurts the team.  His constant excuses and apologies for the organization foster an environment of ‘oh gee, it’s just bad luck.’  As a result, our simple fans either maintain their delusion or deflect blame onto the players, or the coach.  It’s shocking how rare fans blame Sterling.  As a New Yorker, I can tell you that in no way, shape or form – if this was NY – would Sterling be permitted to stroll happily to his mid-court seat with nary a peep from the audience.  Roeser would not be permitted to sit in his center court seat with just the occasional approach by a fan asking him when so and so will come off the DL.  Sterling and Roeser would be rained with boos.   And curses.  They would never be permitted to bring their family into the arena for fear of rank embarrassment.  Roeser himself might be physically assaulted by a few fans.

But that’s not the atmosphere.  Fans accept the losing.  There is no anger.  And that is in large part because our announcer is never, ever, angry (except at me, for challenging his rosy outlook).  I mean, at some level, and don’t get me wrong, I think Chick Hearn might be the most overrated announcer of all time – we need a little crankiness on the air.  A little irritation.  A litte anger.  A little Tommy Heinsohn to get everyone angry.  At the organization.  I know Sterling is Ralph’s boss – but use subtlety.  “mmm.  Gomes misses again.   Harrington with a bucket, maybe the extra money would have been worth it.  hmmm.”

Ralph is objective about 29 teams in the league, but he is completely incapable of being objective about the Clippers.  Here’s a summary of the disagreements I’ve had with Ralph on his facebook page in the last year and half and the result – and I’m listing every one.

1)  I said Ramon Sessions last year as FA would go to the team who paid him the most and he was there for the Clippers taking.  Ralph insisted it wasn’t a money issue – Sessions wanted to start, he wouldn’t accept a backup role. 

Result – Sessions went to Minnesota as a backup – to the team that offered him the most.  (And less than we were talking about what the clips should offer him.)  Ralph did offer the caveat that the Clippers shouldn’t spend money on a good backup because they were saving their money for LeBron. 

2)  I said that dumping Z-Bo to clear cap space was folly – we had a very good player, and with our max cap space, not only would we not get LeBron – we wouldn’t get anything as good as Z-Bo or even what we could get for Z-Bo in a trade.  Ralph told me that he and every pundit felt that dumping Z-Bo for max cap space was a brilliant move.  I explained it was a good move for just about every team – like the Knicks for example who’d get a good player with their cap space – but not for the Clippers.

Result:  Z-Bo had an All-Star year, Blake got injured last year, Kaman injured as we speak, and I don’t have to tell anyone what we did with our max cap space.  Plus Z-Bo’s contract expires after this year.  Gomes, Foye and Cook?  Nope, multi-year deals, all.

3)  In early July, I said we’d wasted our cap space on middling Free Agents and that we were done.  Ralph insisted we weren’t done. 

Result:  We got no one.  We were done.  Ralph then insisted he’d been right “because Olshey was still talking to people.” (!)  Far as I know, Olshey is still yapping.

4)  Ralph insisted that acquiring Gomes was “a good consolation prize” to missing out on LeBron.  I said it wasn’t and listed 10 other threes that were available and would have been better.  After two games, I pointed out that Gomes was doing far worse than all of them.  Ralph insisted that I was mainupulating statistics and using a small sample size.

Result:  13 games later the gap between Gomes’ performance and the other threes has only grown.

5)  I said that acquiring Beasley over the summer – when he was offered to us – was a no-brainer.  Time has proven that one devastatingly accurate.  Ralph’s take is ‘at the time it wasn’t known that Beasley was a three and what was known was that he was a headcase.’  I’ve already blogged about the rank stupidity of the Clippers passing this one up – but Ralph’s continued defense of management is what hurts the team here.  The fans  – we have extremely stupid, unkowledgeable fans – are deflected from the real matter. 

And so it goes.  At every level and at every step, Ralph not only never expresses anger or disappointment in the management of the team – he defends and apologizes the management of what has become a national punchline.

Now make no mistake, unlike Sterling and Roeser who could care less about the performance of the team – Ralph, like me and Clipper Darryl – love this team and would give his right arm for the team to do well.  That’s why Ralph is a victim, like we all are, of Sterling’s abuse.

But he’s also an enabler, and that’s what I find troubling.

In all ways – both good and bad – Ralph is the perfect announcer for a Donald Sterling-owned team.  Sterling will never ever be able to replace what Ralph provides Donald.  I only hope that Ralph outlives Sterling and gets to enjoy at least one playoff run.  ‘Cause Ralphie, boy, I know you’ll never believe this, but I love ‘ya.