The Lakers and Clippers are teams going in vastly different directions at this precise moment. The Lakers, to put it bluntly, look just horrible, if you were to base their quality on last night’s game. I imagine, especially against a team with two quality bigs like the Clips, they’re much different with Kwame Brown (out last night, and just the fact that he is a difference maker to that extent being a huge red flag in the first place). The other big thing is that Andrew Bynum, their 7 foot kid prodigy, just doesn’t look nearly as good as he did at the beginning of the season. I caught a few laker games back in November and December, and this kid was looking off the charts. Maybe he just got tired, maybe he’s got a crush on a 20 year old stripper that’s jerking his chain, who the hell knows, he’s what, 18 years old? Could be anything. But it’s obviously affected his game. The Lakers, are, at this point, relatively healthy, not counting Kwame, but they still haven’t successfully gotten Luke Walton and Lamar back into the swing, although both of them, especially Odom, played pretty well last night. The Lakers still spend an inordinate amount of time standing around waiting for Kobe to do Kobe-like stuff, which he has been having to do quite often. Luckily, it didn’t work out for them last night, and the Clips were able to take advantage.

As for our lovely LA Bastard Stepchildren, the Clippers have never looked better the whole year. Jason Hart’s influence, combined with Kaman suddenly turning into an absolute beast (at the perfect time), combined with Cat Mobley becoming just an incredible all around player and hot hot shooter (Tim Thomas’ shot has been stroking pretty well as of late as well), and finally Corey Maggette and Dunleavy ending what may or may not have been a media created or at least enhanced argument over playing time, respect, defense, whatever. Corey is playing great, on both ends, and you can tell he really really cares and wants to win. You can see this plainly on the faces of the whole team. They are a team in every sense of the word, which just a month or so ago, bottoming out with Doug Christie basically telling the Clippers to suck it, that he had better things to do, like get pistol whipped by his wife and chained up in her shoe closet, they absolutely were not. They were nothing short of a complete mess. And now they have been magically cured. Beautiful.

Maybe not magically. Read Clipperblog’s excellent post on last night’s game for a very clear and cogent x’s & o’s explanation of why we are so much better, which among other fascinating things, elucidates how Chris Kaman’s renaissance has freed up so much space for Elton, and how this has, along with other delineated factors, brought back the spirit and substance of the beautiful ghost of the clippers’ 2006 playoff edition.

It just doesn’t seem logical, that clipper luck would be so good to have the guys peaking in every sense of the word at just the right time, AND Sam Cassell (likely) and Shaun Livingston (definitely) are out for the year? What? Who on God’s green earth could have predicted this? Not me, certainly, but I sure as damn hell am enjoying it. Especially when we beat the Lakers, and especially when we beat them by playing team ball while they look discombobulated and desperate, with Kobe throwing up shot after shot after crazy shot, making some, but missing much more. Huge win in every sense of the word last night, in the pride sense (beating your cross town rival), the morale sense (getting everyone involved and your quote unquote STAR, ie Elton Brand, playing a huge role, but not necessarily on the scoring end), the standings sense (Golden State, Denver, and NOOCH all won last night), and just the overall sense of the greater good and balance in the universe being restored to some semblance of positive chakra, or something similar that a feelgood witch doctor swami would say as chicken guts bake and tarot cards flip. Believe, clippernation, believe, anything can happen.

Bob Baker (the LA Times’ Cliptomaniac) wrote a nice piece on the effect of Jason Hart on the Clippers’ stretch run this year. The jist of it: “Hart reminded the Clippers—by deeds, not words—what it feels like to have something to prove.” Read the whole thing. For me. No, for yourself. OK, for me, if that’s what it takes, but afterwards, you’ll thank Allah. Promise.

In other Clipper point guard news, this more in the depressing vein we’ve come to expect, it looks like Sam Cassell is shuttin’ er down for the year, at least until the playoffs. No real surprise after the frightening crumple after about 2 minutes in the game up in Portland on Saturday.

As for the Clips’ next game, it’s tomorrow against our neighbors down the hallway. No, not the skid row bums, but those other smelly ones, yup, the Lakers. Hopefully the crew can hold Kobe under 50, or hopefully not, as a reasonable Kobe line means that his mates in gold are actually getting involved, which is bad news. Eh, pick your poison. I'll let Dunleavy do the head scratching on that one. Which he's done a bit of already. Quoth coach D on the subject of Bryant: "You always try to keep him somewhat off balance, be a little bit unpredictable in what you're doing, and still read your situations correctly to give enough help on him. Then there are other times when you have to throw the kitchen sink at him because he's just got it going so good."

Closing on a bizarre note, Chris Kaman’s “undoubtably horrifying testicles” may have magnetic powers to a degree unknown since the Paleolithic age. Evidence in the public eye to this point has only pointed to negative ramifications, but a full disclosure interview would be required to ascertain what behind the scenes benefits young Chris may be realizing as a side effect of this strange phenomenon. If I hear anything, so will you, dear reader.

The Clippers have not so suddenly won 7 out of their last 9. For a little perspective, prior to that, they’d lost 6 of 7, so yeah, it’s something of a little turnaround, ok, no, it’s gigantor vs. mothra in the fetid scrap metal pit of doom, a la Elvis trading shots with Jimi Hendrix with the stakes either or both’s own very eternity in the pop cultural landscape, winner take all. Dare I exaggerate? Sure, but the truth lies only about 3 feet from the mythology, and the metaphorical Poseidon figure looming large over all proceedings is 1 quarter real, 2 quarters Memorex, and 3 eighth’s polyurethane foam of an unknown origin. Don’t ask me about the rest; the mystery is a thick soup of inequitable lack of fortune that is best left in the unwritten annals of history.

I’m veering off into sectors that are completely lackadaisically irrelevant, so I’ll focus, but leave it to say, the ship has been righted. Saturday night’s blowout win at Portland (and that’s what it was, despite the fact that the Blazer’s closed to within 15 or whatever it was down the stretch) was a sign bigger and bolder than M. Night Shalamalam’s dessicated wheat fields, and the message read “beware of clippers.” Some messages were made to be obeyed, and others ignored, only the harbingers of their own fate can ascertain for sure what they’ll do more than a moment before it is done.

I for one hope the rest of the league buries its collective head in the sand, better for our scrappy squad to sneak into enemy camps under cover of the night and carve hearts and savage fanbases that for years had lauged and howled and pointed barbed fingers at our sadsack allegiance to what appeared a lost and withered cause. Wherefore art thou now hecklers of midmorning’s last vestiges of dawn? You’re at the bar, that’s where, drowning sorrows in recollective anticipation of LA bastard stepchildren flying through an arena near you, slashing, driving, dunking, blocking, doing that which never, once the chips had apparently been layed, and then not up until a couple weeks ago and then that much moreso in this copper laced millisecond, appeared possible in the hearts of men women and/or children not involved in a very real sense in a revolution of the disenfranchised loyalists of a nation strong and wide. Rejoice, weep, whatever works.