Tim Duncan scored 19 points and snagged 13 boards in San Antonio’s 113-103 win over the Clippers.
All-star point guard Chris Paul shot an uncharacteristic one-for-ten from the field and the Los Angeles Clippersjust couldn’t take advantage of a sidelined Tony Parker losing to the San Antonio Spurs, 113-103 in a battle of Western Conference powers.
In his fourth game back from a shoulder injury – including Sunday’s All-Star Game – Paul managed to hit nine free throws giving him eleven points on the night but he’s still making his way back from that six-week layoff.
Chris Paul & Blake Griffin left in the third quarter of a 123-78 win over Philadelphia last week.
With the all-star break in the rear-view mirror, the Los Angeles Clippers can get back to work on improving their seeding for the upcoming NBA western conference playoffs.
The Clippers currently rest in the 4th seed – six games behind current top-seed Oklahoma City – as they get ready to tip-off the second half of the season – just 27 games – Tuesday night against the defending Western Conference Champion San Antonio Spurs currently the 2nd seed just four games behind the Thunder.
Blake Griffin will start at forward for the Western Conference in this Sunday’s NBA All-Star Game. Thanx: foxsports.com
For the second time in six years the NBA All-Star Game tips-off in the city of New Orleans later today.
Two Los Angeles Clippers are on the Western Conference roster. Power forward Blake Griffin voted in as a starter by the fans, makes his fourth All-Star Game appearance.
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Nursing that right shoulder, Chris Paul scored 20 points and dished out 12 assists in L.A.’s 122-117 win over Portland.
In the final game before the NBA All-Star break, all-stars and those who should be all-stars were on display Wednesday night at Staples Center and put on quite a show as the Los Angeles Clippers (37-18) beat thePortland Trail Blazers (36-17), 122-117 in a game that saw 40 lead changes.
Chris Paul was back in the lineup directing the Clippers to 123-78 win over Philadelphia.
Even with that final score – 123 to 78 – the game wasn’t even that close.
Celebrating point guard Chris Paul‘s return after being sidelined for six weeks with a separated right shoulder, the Los Angeles Clippers (36-18) toyed with thePhiladelphia 76ers (15-37) winning by 45 points in front of the 120th consecutive Clippers sellout at Staples Center.
Chris Paul tumbles to the floor separating his right shoulder against the Dallas Mavericks. Thanx: USATODAYSI
All-star point guard Chris Paul returns to the Clippers lineup tonight with Los Angeles hosting the Philadelphia 76ers.
Paul, who is averaging 20 points and a league-high 11 assists, separated his shoulder in the third quarter against the Mavericks in Dallas on January 3rd and – according to Clippers coach Doc Rivers – is ready to go.
DeAndre Jordan and Blake Griffin of the Clippers have each others’ back with the Heat in town.
Right before the season started first-year Los Angeles Clippers head coach Doc Rivers told the media his philosophy on the regular season is that it’s a dress rehearsal for the playoff grind.
Well, tonight’s game is definitely a dress rehearsal. The Clippers (34-17) host the defending two-time NBA world champion Miami Heat in the first of a five-game home stand at Staples Center.
Rams owner Stan Kroenke purchased 60 acres of land between the Fabulous forum and Hollywood Park. Thanx: AP
According to unnamed sources, St. Louis Rams owner Stanley Enos Kroenke – the native of St. Louis named after Cardinals baseball legends Stan “the Man” Musial and Enos Slaughter – has purchased 60 acres of land in Inglewood sitting between the Fabulous Forum and Hollywood Park.
Just enough land to build a top tier football stadium.
Also known as “Silent Stan” for staying out of the media spotlight and rarely speaking publicly when it comes to his business ventures and pro sports franchises, it seems “Silent Stan” opened his office window and, like the TV news anchor in the 1976 movie NETWORK, yelled to St. Louis,
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
The St. Louis media and football fans said L.A. wasn’t a factor going all-in on the outright lie that L.A. was a failure when it came to supporting an NFL team when in actuality L.A. supported the Rams 49 years prior to their move to the Midwest.
The St. Louis media said it was “in the know” about behind-the-scenes negotiations between the Rams and St. Louis for a new stadium.
Stan Kroenke wants a top tier stadium for his Rams. Thanx: L.A. Times
They said “Silent Stan” would build his own stadium in St. Louis.
It seems they were half right. He might build his own stadium.
In Los Angeles. Not St. Louis.
The Rams – and Raiders – move out of Los Angeles was all about stadium issues. Specifically, the lack of modern NFL ready facilities in the greater Los Angeles/Orange County areas.
If you’re still not convinced L.A. supported an NFL team, listen to ex-Los Angeles Rams stars Jack Youngblood and Bob Klein in interviews I did with each about two years ago.
Adding Hollywood Park to the shovel-ready Farmers Field site in Downtown L.A., it appears the Rams moving back to Los Angeles is seriously in play.
If St. Louis wasn’t worried about the Los Angeles Rams before, you can bet they are now.
This purchase gives Stanley Enos Kroenke amazing tourque with much leverage in his pursuit of a top tier stadium for his Rams in St. Louis or anywhere.
Ex-Rams GM John Shaw negotiated the “sweetheart lease” that moved the Rams to St Louis in 1995. Thanx: AP
That “sweetheart lease” negotiated by then Los Angeles Rams GM John Shaw moving the team to St. Louis for the 1995 season has stipulations in it calling for the Edward Jones Dome – formerly known as the Trans World Dome – to be in the top 25% of all NFL stadiums 10 and 20 years into the lease, or the Rams are free to go year-to-year in the Gateway City or move on to greener pastures.
Vilified by Rams fans in Los Angeles and Orange County for orchestrating the move of THEIR team to St. Louis in the mid-90s, it seems John Shaw could end up being a hero for negotiating that “sweetheart lease.”
It’s still too early to really tell what “Silent Stan” will do.
By now you know the story.
Arbiters ruled the Rams’ request for $700 million in upgrades to the EJD were approved while St. Louis’ plan for a $120 million upgrade isn’t an upgrade at all.
The Edward Jones Dome needs a $700 million face-lift St. Louis can’t afford. Thanx: AP
St. Louis can’t afford $700 million for a football stadium.
So, now we wait until the end of the upcoming season. That’s when that top-tier stipulation hits year 20 making the Rams free agents to play where they want.
What we do know is “Silent Stan’s” purchase of 60 acres of land at Hollywood Park has St. Louis hearing him loud and clear.
It seems the Los Angeles Rams 20-year road trip might be coming to an end.
Hope you’re still enjoying that “sweetheart lease,” St. Louis!
The Bring Back the Los Angeles Rams Facebook page has 25,000+ members.
Coming up on 20 seasons without a pro football team, Los Angeles has become a real threat to some other cities that have NFL teams with serious enough stadium issues that they could lose their team to the City of Angels very soon.
And they’re worried. Well. One city really is.
It’s a real enough threat now to three cities in particular – St. Louis, Oakland and San Diego – because no longer can Los Angeles be used by other cities as leverage by team owners in these cities to pony up a large ransom to build them a stadium on the tax-payers’ dime.
That’s because in every NFL city you look at – excluding St. Louis, Oakland and San Diego – they’ve all got a new stadium, are building a new stadium or are up-grading their current stadium.
The Raiders are looking to stay in Oakland wanting some sort of stadium upgrade where their current home stands now or maybe even sharing the new Levi Stadium in Santa Clara with the San Francisco 49ers. That’s all pending.
Meanwhile, the Chargers – who have been able to leave San Diego for a decade now – still want to hash out a stadium deal somewhere in San Diego – a city the NFL doesn’t want to lose. That’s all pending too.
So, that leaves St. Louis – currently home to the Rams, the team that called Los Angeles/So. Cal. home for 49 years prior to bolting for the Midwest in 1995.
There’s quite a social media struggle between Rams fans from both cities that, sometimes, gets downright ugly.
Rams owner Stan Kroenke – a Missouri native who, the St. Louis partisans like to point out, was named after St. Louis Cardinal baseball greats Stan Musial and Enos Slaughter – has been quiet either way about what’s going to happen after the 2014 season.
The end of next season is significant because Gerogia Frontiere and John Shaw, the owner and general manager respectively of the then-Los Angeles Rams who moved the team to St. Louis in 1995, negotiated a “sweetheart lease” when they moved to the Midwest that said if after 10 and then 20 years the Edward Jones Dome isn’t in the top 25% of all NFL stadiums, the Rams become a free-agent able to stay or go where they want.
“Sweetheart lease.” YES. For the Rams. Not so much for the city of St. Louis.
Back in the early 90s St. Louis had to get a team at any cost because it was believed the Gateway City would be awarded one of two expansion franchises with the other going to Charlotte.
The Dome was being built for the expansion St. Louis Stallions when a funny thing happened on the way to the Gateway to the West. The NFL awarded that franchise to Jacksonville Florida instead of St. Louis.
St. Louis was getting all dressed up with nowhere to go as the saying goes.
Until St. Louis advertising exec and Busch family member James Orthwein came to the rescue. He bought the New England Patriots from Victor Kiam in 1992 and planned to move them to St. Louis after the 1993 season to play in the Dome.
Problem is Robert Kraft stepped in. He owned old Foxboro Stadium and wouldn’t let Orthwein out of the stadium lease. So, he sold the team to Kraft. The rest there is history.
Luckily for St. Louis, Georgia and John were still looking for the best deal they could get first looking to Baltimore which was without a team since the Colts left for Indy in 1984.
Anaheim – or Los Angeles – wasn’t about to spend any tax-payer money to build or remodel stadiums (the Big A & Coliseum) each city still believed was NFL-suitable. So, the Rams bolted from Anaheim at the same time Al Davis took his Raiders out of the L.A. Coliseum and back to Oakland – the Raiders’ original home.
That’s when St. Louis stepped in and bent over backwards (desperate after the football Cardinals left seven years earlier for Phoenix after Bill Bidwell wasn’t getting, ironically, a new stadium), giving the Rams anything they wanted just so that dome they built for the Stallions and then the Patriots wouldn’t be empty.
Those red seats in the Dome now…….they were put in with the thought that the Patriots were going to be the team.
Those red seats were almost deal breakers for Georgia who wanted blue seats. Of course, St. Louis worked some sort of other compromise – added to all the others – in that “sweetheart lease” and those red seats stayed and the Rams moved in.
I happen to believe both cities should be represented by an NFL team.
If I have to choose between the two, I’ll pick Los Angeles because that’s where I’m from and I’m one of millions that’s been part of its great NFL heritage.
The late Merlin Olsen (74) and late Deacon Jones (75) are part of the Rams 49-year heritage in Los Angeles. thanx: AP
A heritage lost – not because the Rams weren’t supported here because, again, they did call Los Angeles/So. Cal. home for 49 years prior to bolting for the Midwest – but because there was no new stadium or an agreement to upgrade existing stadiums in the L.A./Orange County areas.
That’s it.
Had the Rams not been supported in Los Angeles, stands to reason they would have left after year five in 1950 and not waited until year 49 in 1995.
I can’t speak about St. Louis because I’ve never been there. So, I’ll refrain from commenting about the Gateway City – good or bad – because I just don’t know much about St. Louis.
Here’s what I know about some media types and football fans in St. Louis. When they speak about Los Angeles, they have no idea what they’re talking about.
To defend their city, they make the argument that Los Angeles has failed as an NFL city because it’s had three chances to succeed but couldn’t since the Rams, Raiders and the AFL Los Angeles Chargers all left “due to the lack of fan support.”
Sorry, St. Louis. You’re wrong.
See five paragraphs above. Or better yet, click on the video-link to hear from one of the TV voices of the NFL, Al Michaels. I asked him about….well…..just listen.
So, stop using the “L.A. can’t support an NFL team” card, St. Louis. That’s not a reason. It’s an excuse. That goes for anyone, anywhere that’s used that excuse about L.A.
A downright lie.
I have no idea – nor does anyone, anywhere, in any city especially in St. Louis and Los Angeles – what Stanley Enos Kroenke will do after the 2014 season because he hasn’t said anything either way.
What I do know is Stanley Enos Kroenke – the St. Louis native – made a strong bid to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers two years ago and has a home in Malibu.
What does that mean? Probably as much as Stanley Enos Kroenke being named after St. Louis baseball Cardinal legends Stan Musial and Enos Slaughter.
Not much.
What speaks volumes is the NFL is staying out of it at the moment. Commissioner Roger Goodell isn’t flying to St. Louis to speak to the STL government entities – like he did in Minneapolis to save the Vikings from moving out west – to save the Rams from moving out west.
And Stanley Enos Kroenke is living by the letter of the law on that “sweetheart lease” negotiated way back when by John Shaw and a desperate City of St. Louis to put a team in the Dome they originally thought would be for the Stallions.
Seems it’s a 50-50 proposition.
Los Angeles has Farmers Field ready to be built by AEG as soon as a team says we want to move to L.A.
Surely. no city government anywhere in the world – let alone this country – would commit millions and millions, even billions, of dollars to build a stadium without securing a team to play in it first, right?
Well. Maybe one.
Oops. Sorry, St. Louis. Does that hit too close to home or hit you below the proverbial belt?
Los Angeles, its government and her tax-payers aren’t that stupid.
Oops. Sorry again, St. Louis.
St. Louis still has the Rams playing in the outdated EJD and with the hopes Stanley Enos Kroenke will, at the last minute, pay for a new billion dollar stadium out of his own pocket to be built in a place called Fenton or the Bottle District.
But all’s quiet on all fronts until the 2014 season has been played out per that “sweetheart lease.”
Former L.A. Rams running back Eric Dickerson (rt) and former Bears running back Gale Sayers (lt) at the Deacon Jones Memorial Service at the L.A. Coliseum last Summer.
Some St. Louis “bloggers” also like to cite a five-year old comment by former Los Angeles Rams hall-of-fame running back Eric Dickerson saying Los Angeles doesn’t deserve a team. You’d say that too if you still felt some resentment towards Georgia and John Shaw if you had been underpaid telling your coach to run “47-gap” himself.
Of course, he’s since retracted those comments and has said many times – including on the NFL Network – Los Angeles needs to have a team.
Although he played for three other teams after being traded from the Rams in 1987, two years ago Eric told me he’s a Ram for life no matter where they call home.
Then, after discussing the Rams are one of the teams that could possibly move to Los Angeles, I asked him what that would mean to him and the rest of the ex-Los Angeles Rams players.
He said….well…….click on the video-link to hear from Eric……
So, St. Louis, stop using the “Eric Dickerson doesn’t think L.A. deserves a team” card. It simply isn’t a reason. It simply isn’t true.
As I said earlier, I think both cities should be home to NFL teams.
No one cared about St. Louis when the Cardinals left. No one cared about Los Angeles when the Rams and Raiders left at the same time.
No one’s going to care either way – except for those in St. Louis and Los Angeles – when something’s done with the Rams once that “sweetheart lease” runs its course after 2014.
But those “bloggers/writers/journalists” from St. Louis at some point have to admit there’s a possibility the Rams could leave for Los Angeles after 2014 just like I admit that Stanley Enos Kroenke could pull a billion-dollar rabbit out of his hat with help from the NFL’s G-4 LOAN –which is a loan to be repaid by somebody (tax-payers) – to build a stadium somewhere in Fenton or the Bottle District.
Where ever those places are.
But let’s stop using the “L.A. never supported the NFL” card and the “Eric Dickerson doesn’t think L.A. deserves a team” card.
Both are simply not true. Playing those cards you look as stupid as a city committing millions and millions, even billions, of dollars to build a football stadium before securing a team to play in it.
Oops. Sorry again, St. Louis.
What is true is that St. Louis football fans and St. Louis “journalists” are very worried.
Until after the 2014 NFL season everyone!!
Enjoy the remainder of that “sweetheart lease,” St. Louis!
On Any Given Sports Day 