The long road for the Los Angeles Clippers to their new Intuit Dome now under construction in Inglewood began at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium in New York state on Oct. 14, 1970.
The NBA franchise now operating as the Clippers played its first game on that date as the Buffalo Braves, one of three new expansion teams launched by the league that year. (The Portland Trail Blazers and Cleveland Cavaliers were the other two.)
“The Aud” had opened in 1940. It was built under the Works Progress Administration (WPA) New Deal program. The venerable arena also hosted the newly created National Hockey League team, the Sabres, whose first season also was in 1970.
33-year-old entrepreneur Paul Snyder paid $4 million (remember that number) to become owner of the Braves. The team did fairly well on the court, thanks to players such as Randy Smith, Jim McMillan and future Hall of Famer Bob McAdoo.
But Snyder had trouble wrangling home game dates for the team at The Aud, which already had established tenants. The Braves were forced to play some of their “home” games in Toronto as a result. Frustrated, Brown made a deal to swap ownership with Irv Levin of the Celtics in 1978.
Levin lived on the West Coast and moved the Braves to San Diego for the 1978-79 season. Fans voted to change the team name to the Clippers, after the tall sailing ships, and the team played its first game in the San Diego Sports Arena on Oct. 13, 1978.
Despite having stars such as Bill Walton and Terry Cummings, the renamed team struggled in San Diego and its stars often were injured. Mercurial guard World B. Free did average 30.2 points per game during the 1979-80 season.
Its next ownership change would prove to be catastrophic. Levin sold the team to real estate developer and attorney Donald T. Sterling for $12.4 million on May 4, 1981. The Clippers went on to have one of their worst seasons, winning only 17 out of its 82 games in 1981-82.
Eyeing the success of owners such as the Lakers’ Jerry Buss, Sterling had wanted the team to feed his self-image, but he lacked sports management knowledge and seemed unwilling to run it coherently.
He also was notoriously stingy. Hotels refused to book the team due to his previous failures to pay bills. Bus companies did likewise. Sterling also got into trouble with the players’ association for insisting that the team travel in coach on commercial airlines during road trips, which violated the union’s rules.
The NBA nearly stripped him of ownership over these and other instances of mismanagement, until Sterling agreed to hire Alan Rothenberg to run the team.
Day-to-day operations ran more smoothly under the former Laker executive’s direction, but the team continued to fare poorly in San Diego. After a legal battle with the NBA, Sterling succeeded in moving the franchise to Los Angeles in 1984.
The Clippers played their first game at the aging Los Angeles Sports Arena next to the Coliseum on Oct. 27, 1984, defeating the Utah Jazz. But, with the Showtime-era Lakers in the middle of epic battles with the Boston Celtics for NBA championships, little notice was paid to the Clips. They continued to struggle on the court, winning a franchise-low 12 games during the 1986-87 season.
The team made playoff appearances in the early 1990s, thanks to players such as Danny Manning and Ron Harper. Plans later in the decade to have its own arena built in Exposition Park fell through, though. After flirting with the Pond in Anaheim, the team decided to join the Lakers in moving to the new Staples Center (renamed the Crypto.com Arena in December 2021) downtown in 1999.
On the court, the team had its ups and downs during the early 2000s, but, through it all, Sterling just couldn’t seem to avoid negative publicity. Matters came to a head in 2014 when TMZ released the tape of a conversation between Sterling and his alleged mistress during which he made racist remarks while excoriating her for having her picture taken with Magic Johnson.
Adding racism to the long litany of Sterling’s indiscretions tipped the scales, and the NBA stripped him of ownership after furious protests from league players, advertisers, activists and fans. These included members of the Clippers wearing their jerseys inside out so as to let the team logo show during a playoff game. Sterling ultimately was fined $2.5 million and banned from the league for life.
On Aug. 2, 2014, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer officially took control of the franchise, after purchasing it for $2 billion, 500 times what Paul Snyder originally paid in 1970. Known for his incessantly jubilant cheerleading at games, Ballmer has managed to turn the franchise around and build it into a successful enterprise.
In 2017, the city of Inglewood signed a deal with the Clippers calling for the construction of a new arena for the team. The Madison Square Garden Corp., owners of the Forum in Inglewood, attempted to block the deal, claiming the new arena would unfairly compete with live events at the Forum. The legal wrangling continued for the next couple of years.
Ballmer solved the dispute by agreeing in 2020 to buy the Forum from MSG for $400 million. Ground was broken for the new arena on Sept. 17, 2021. Shortly afterward, the Clippers announced a lengthy naming-rights deal with the Intuit software company.
The Intuit dome is currently under construction, with the team expected to move into the new facility in 2024. The arena at 3921 W. 102nd St. will include a practice facility (replacing its current one in El Segundo), a sports medicine clinic, some retail space and an outdoor plaza with public basketball courts.
Sources:
Basketball Reference website.
Buffalo Braves History blog.
Buffalo News archives.
Daily Breeze archives.
San Diego Union-Tribune archives.
Wikipedia.
