The Los Angeles Clippers are, without any possible argument, the

losingest team in history. We've crunched the numbers, we've

colored the bar graphs, we've drawn the pie charts. Everybody

suspected all along that the Clippers were the worst team--whom

are we kidding?--but nobody, until now, had ever bothered to

certify their chronic incompetence with actual arithmetic. So

taking what was long just a kind of folklore of futility, we've

done the dispiriting dirty work and can now confirm it: Among

franchises in the four major professional sports, the Clippers

are the most inept ever.

Agreed, this is a horrible thing to announce--as if the

Clippers, and whoever their fans might be, need to be

discouraged any further. We like to accentuate the positive in

pro sports, when court records permit, but there is no longer

any overlooking this magnitude of unrelieved desperation. In

their 22 seasons in Southern California the Clippers have won

barely one third of their games (chart, page 58). Since leaving

Buffalo in 1978 (where, as the Braves, they were pretty bad

too), the Clippers, either in San Diego or Los Angeles, have had

just two winning seasons. They've been to the playoffs only

three times. They've had 13 coaching changes. A dozen last-place

finishes in the Pacific Division. A brief flirtation, in

1997-98, at the Philadelphia 76ers' record-low nine wins in a

season. (L.A. finished 17-65.)

When it comes to protracted prostration, there's never been

anything like it. Other franchises have endured disastrous

spells, have even become catchphrases for failure. The NFL's New

Orleans Saints come to mind, a team that slogged through 12

consecutive losing seasons in the 1960s and '70s, its fans

wearing paper bags over their heads in shame. But even the

Ain'ts won a division title, in 1991. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers

had a nice (bad) stretch, but they still reached a pair of NFC

championship games. The Minnesota Timberwolves seemed capable of

challenging the Clippers, but back-to-back playoff

appearances--and Kevin Garnett--effectively removed them from

the noncompetition.

Even franchises that played so badly as to conjure embarrassment

at their very mentions have all gained redemption, the Clippers

excepted. For sports fans of a certain age, the New York Mets

will always signify comic incapacity. Their first seasons, to

this day, remain a cautionary tale for any expansion team owner.

Yet the Mets overcame that floundering and bumbling beginning to

become a championship team, and in relatively short order. If

you recall, they were amazin'.

Really, scant few teams haven't enjoyed at least a dead-cat

bounce after alarming declines. The Denver Nuggets kept the

Clippers out of Jay Leno's monologues in 1997-98, when they too

chased the 76ers' nine-victory mark. But the Nuggets didn't make

it either and, worse for the Clippers, have since rebounded to

respectability. The Clippers, after that brief respite from

ridicule, rebounded in reverse: The very next season they almost

broke the Nuggets' and Vancouver Grizzlies' mark of 23

consecutive losses, dropping their first 17 games, and, in a

nice bit of self-mockery, appeared on Leno to celebrate their

near-epic failure.

There are other cities where the fans like to characterize

themselves as "long suffering," but none can bemoan a losing

lineage as extensive as L.A.'s. A ground ball through Bill

Buckner's legs may indeed be the work of the gods. Where the

Clippers come from, however, it's just an E-3. Fate might define

a team in some instances, but only in those in which a grounder

through the legs (or its basketball equivalent) is not an

everyday occurrence. In any case, Buckner's Boston Red Sox were

in a World Series in 1986 when destiny reared its ugly head. The

World Series! Against the Mets!

The Clippers, with their sustained flair for failure, are

obviously beyond the grasp of fate. Their helplessness, so

practiced and so dependable, is clearly the work of man,

possibly the work of just one man--we're thinking of Donald

Sterling here (page 60)--although surely no owner could weave a

web of defeat like this all by himself. It's more probably a

team effort, each man doing his worst, nobody's hand really on

the wheel.

Their winning percentage drifts ever lower, no redemption in

sight. They win 20% of their games in one season ('97-98), 18%

the next. Lottery picks every year and the ineptitude continues,

virtually uninterrupted. And somehow the team continues to

exist. There normally is this refuge in seasonal sports: the

idea that there is always next year. But the Clippers seem to

refute the notion that there is always reason to hope, always a

possibility of success. Having earned only nine victories in

last year's strike-shortened season, the team was nevertheless

optimistic about its chances this year. Really. And yet, after a

season-opening burst, the Clippers have reverted to form, with

all that entails (a coaching change, players' promising

defections, a secure hold on last place), oddly at peace with

their destiny.

Part of the problem is that as awful as they may be, they are

not especially clownish. They might reasonably have almost the

same expectation of victory as, say, the Washington Generals,

yet they are unmistakably playing professional basketball. Often

with genuine professional basketball players. Pretty often,

anyway. On a recent night one Clipper, inbounding the ball,

absentmindedly began dribbling upcourt from his sideline

position, cutting out the middle man. But such comical gaffes

are rare. The Clippers' record might be easier to take

(certainly easier to explain) if they really were clowns,

performing one pratfall after another. But watching them play,

you are struck with the indescribably sad thought: They really

are trying!

It can get a little poignant, too, when you realize that a

college player who's known nothing but the highest level of

success (in fact, because he's known it) will be plunged into

the Clippers' black hole of defeat, sucked into a despair that

is unrelenting, quite possibly life-changing. There's karmic

comedy for you--a player becomes the best in the nation just so

that he might play for the worst in the world. Sometimes it's

not so funny, though. Bo Kimble, the Clippers' No. 1 draft

choice in 1990, recently told the Los Angeles Times that he was

nearly driven to suicide by the team's habitual underachieving.

(To be fair, the executives who signed off on his selection and

watched him flop still have to rush past open windows themselves.)

Free agency being what it is, though, most prospects can

engineer an escape and return to a more competitive world with a

portion of their self-esteem and earning power intact. (See

Danny Manning, Loy Vaught.) For the players, the humiliation is

only temporary. For the franchise, it is unending.

Since it now appears that the Clippers can never evolve into

winners--they are steadfastly improvement-proof, to the point

where their condition must be considered permanent (look at the

numbers, man!)--it becomes important to assign meaning to such

ongoing catastrophe. There's got to be meaning to a failure of

such immensity, else this world would be too frightening to live

in. So, consider this: The Clippers must lose so we can be

reminded that there isn't always a light at the end of the

tunnel, there isn't necessarily redemption and there might not be

a next year.

It's a gloomy lesson, but if it prevents us from taking comfort

in our calamity, from presuming success is the natural order of

life, from counting on a cosmic corrective--well, then the

Clippers have been instructive. Remember as you meander through

your own life, your hand not quite on the wheel: It really can

get worse than this.

COLOR PHOTO: COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN W. MCDONOUGH COVER THE WORST FRANCHISE IN SPORTS HISTORY (and the man responsible)

COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID E. KLUTHO UP AND AWAY? Once he's served his time, rookie Lamar Odom may join the long line of Clippers who threw up their hands and fled.

COLOR PHOTO: JOHN W. MCDONOUGH

Atop the Bottom 10

In the history of the four major pro sports, only 10 teams have

spent at least 10 seasons in one region and never won a playoff

series*. Among these failed franchises, at week's end the

Clippers had the worst winning percentage, the fewest winning

seasons and the most last-place finishes. --David Sabino

% SEASONS

TEAM LEAGUE SEASONS PCT. DIVISION AT .500 LAST PLACE

(W-L-T) TITLES OR BELOW FINISHES



San Diego/

L.A. Clippers NBA 22 .338 (593-1,159) 0 86.4 12

Minnesota

Timberwolves NBA 11 .348 (294-550) 0 81.8 2

Phoenix/Arizona

Cardinals NFL 13 .365 (70-122-0) 0 84.6 5

Sacramento

Kings NBA 15 .380 (445-728) 0 80.0 5

New Orleans

Saints NFL 33 .391 (192-301-5) 1 84.8 10

St. Louis

Cardinals NFL 28 .480 (186-202-14) 2 57.1 4

L.A./Calif./

Anaheim Angels AL 39 .483 (2,987-3,202) 3 61.5 3

Texas

Rangers AL 28 .487 (2,142-2,258) 2 53.6 4

Montreal

Expos NL 31 .488 (2,388-2,501) 1 64.5 5

Houston

Colt 45's/

Astros NL 38 .494 (2,980-3,049) 5 52.6 3

*Not counting the Expos' win in a supplemental division series

necessitated by the 1981 players' strike.