Despite blowout, Davis dazzles early in debut

LOS ANGELES -- Baron Davis experienced 15 minutes of fame on Wednesday followed by 33 minutes of frustration.

For the first 15 minutes of his debut with the Clippers against the Lakers at STAPLES Center, Davis could do no wrong. His Clippers, the red-headed stepchild of the L.A. hoop scene, were leading the vaunted Lakers 33-32 with nine minutes to go in the second quarter.

The hometown kid returned to the neighborhood and showed off all the stuff he learned since he left.

It was only the third time either the Lakers or Clippers had their season opener against their local rival. It happened most recently in 1992 and before that in 1979 when Magic Johnson played his first ever NBA game against the Clips. Davis' return to L.A. might not have been quite as magical, but it had its moments.

He was causing turnovers on defense, he was running the break, he was hitting jumpers and he even hauled in a rebound while sitting on his butt in the middle of a crowded lane.

And all of this was with a heavily taped left hand because of a sprained ligament in his ring finger.

In the first quarter Davis chased the ball down and got his second steal of the quarter, both times making Kobe Bryant the victim of his thieving. Davis turned the swipe into a transition opportunity and finished the play with a behind-the-back flip pass to Al Thornton who finished it with an and-one layup.

A couple of possessions later, Davis saved a backcourt violation with an incredible leaping catch then got from halfcourt to inside the three-point line in about two dribbles before finding Vladimir Radmanovic in his path. Davis crossed up Vladimir Radmanovic so bad that he fell to the floor, giving Davis the perfect opportunity to cap the sequence with a fadeaway 15-footer off the glass to a chorus of ooh and ahhs from the crowd.

The Clippers highlights dissipated as the game wore on and came to a dead halt when Davis exited the game for good at the end of the third with the game out of reach.

Davis' final line was pedestrian (11 points on 4-for-13 shooting, seven assists, three steals, three turnovers) and while he showed a glimpse of what can be in those first 15 minutes, the final score was an in-your-face reminder of what currently is:

Lakers 117, Clippers 79.

"We ran into a brick wall," Davis said. "They're a championship team. They know what they're trying to accomplish and we're trying to figure it out."

Davis borrowed Sasha Vujacic's self-anointed nickname, "The Machine," and bestowed it on the whole Lakers team.

"That's a machine and we're trying to put our pieces together," Davis said. "All the credit goes to them for smacking us upside the head that first game."

Forget the score for a minute. The Clippers weren't supposed to win.

The Lakers are coming off a 57-win season and a run to The Finals. The Clippers are coming off a 59-loss season and an eight-game preseason schedule that saw three of its starters -- Davis, Tim Thomas and Marcus Camby -- play a combined two games between them.

It's unrealistic to ask Davis to turn the hoops world on its axis and have his Clippers leapfrog the Lakers in popularity and performance in just a single game, but little by little he can carve out his niche.

L.A. is a city that loves its stars just as much as it loves its basketball, and Davis gives you both.

The Lakers might count Jack Nicholson and Denzel Washington as fans of their team, but Baron had his own personal celebrity cheerleader in Kate Hudson who sat in a courtside seat directly across from the Clippers' bench to see her high school classmate's big night.

"We had a lead 33-32, we had a nice tempo going, we were playing well and when we came out of a timeout, we didn't execute two plays then we took a couple of quick shots and next thing you know it was like 42-33," Clippers coach Mike Dunleavy said.

The score actually went from 33-32 in favor of the Clippers to a 49-33 advantage for the Lakers as the purple and gold ripped the game wide open with a 17-0 run sparked by their defense.

"I think the defense is good," Lakers head coach Phil Jackson said. "I think the defense is totally adequate. We're always seeking for better rotation, better help, better individual play, but I thought our defense was good and we forced them to shoot the shots we wanted them to take."

For an idea of just how good that defensive effort has been, consider that the Pistons were the No. 1 team in the league in points allowed per game last season with a 90.07 mark and the Celtics were first in opponents' shooting percentage at .419.

It's only been two games, but the Lakers are obliterating those numbers, holding the Clippers and the Trail Blazers to an average of 77.5 points on a combined 59-for-162 shooting (.364).

Those last two-and-a-half quarters might have been brutal for the Clippers, but they did do something right to start the game.

"We played off energy," Davis said. "I think this team has to be an energy team, a team that gets out in the open floor and takes shots, makes plays in transition and be a penetrating team."

The energy was so infectious in the first quarter that Thomas, the same guy who has seemed allergic to the paint for the last five years, scored the Clippers' first seven points of the game by putting the ball on the floor and going up for dunks instead of chucking up long-balls. The last time Thomas showed this kind of life was when he offered to meet Kenyon Martin in the boxing ring after he got sidelined by a flagrant foul in Game 1 of the first round of the 2004 playoffs when his Knicks got swept by K-Mart's Nets.

The Clippers incorporated a quote by Aristotle into the pregame hype video they showed on the JumboTron:

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit."

The Clippers haven't had a chance to do anything repeatedly. They're a work in progress and Davis knows it. He even hinted at it in his pregame message when he was given the microphone and spoke to the crowd over the P.A. system.

"This year is going to be a different Clipper team, just wait and see," Davis said.

He asked the fans to wait.

"We hit adversity and we didn't know where to go," Davis said after the game. "We couldn't find that place that we to go to, to get a bucket. That really just [takes] time ... It's just time ... It's repetition."

Once Davis can extend his 15 minutes of fame to a full 48 minute game, then the Clippers' time will have come.