The Los Angeles Clippers: 10 things you might not know

9. The Walton years

JOHN BAZEMORE/AP
Former NBA basketball player Bill Walton speaks during a NCAA Final Four tournament college basketball 75th anniversary news conference, April 5, 2013, in Atlanta.

The Clippers’ frustrations as a franchise are perhaps best embodied by Bill Walton. While in San Diego, the team signed him to return to his hometown (he’s from the suburb of La Mesa) in 1979. Although Walton had led the Portland Trail Blazers to a championship in 1977, he missed the entire next season with an injury. The Clippers acquired him anyhow in 1979, but Walton reinjured his foot and only suited up for 14 games. He sat out the 1980-81 and 1981-82 seasons, His return never led the team to the promised land and in 1985 he was traded to the Boston Celtics. It worked out beautifully for the big redhead, who played in a career high 80 games coming off the bench to support Boston’s Big Three frontcourt of Larry Bird, Robert Parish, and Kevin McHale. Walton wound up winning the NBA’s Sixth Man Award and another championship ring.

9 of 10

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

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If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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