Little did Darnell Valentine or any of his loyal fans like myself know that after he was traded from Portland to the Los Angeles Clippers in January 1986, his NBA career would never be the same.
After being the starting point guard for his last three and and half years with the Blazers and averaging 9.8 points, 5.4 assists and 2.3 rebounds in 300 regular-season games during his Portland career, Valentine was demoted to a backup role his first season in L.A. behind Norm Nixon.
Valentine, the 6-1 point guard and former KU All-American, averaged career lows in points (5.9), assists (3.1) rebounds (1.6), steals (0.7), field goal percentage (38.9) and minutes (14.2) in 34 games (two starts) for the dismal Clippers, who finished at 32-50 and fourth place in the Pacific Division while ranked 21st out of 23 teams in attendance.
One of Valentine’s few bright moments that season came against his former team, Portland, on Feb. 1, 1986, when he scored a season-high 21 points in just 21 minutes. For the year with both Portland and L.A., Valentine averaged 7.4 points, 4.0 assists and 1.2 steals in 62 games, while shooting just 41.5 percent from the field, 28.6 percent from beyond the arc, and 74.3 percent at the free throw line.
For Valentine, he seemed a long way from Portland, where he played in front of sellout, crazed home fans each night with sellouts of 12,666 in Memorial Coliseum.
Towards the start of next season in October 1986, Valentine received some good news when the New Jersey Nets signed him to a guaranteed three-year offer worth more than $900,000. But his happiness soon faded when the Clippers announced they planned to match the offer.
In an Oct. 18, 1986 article in the Los Angeles Times, it was reported that Valentine’s agent, David Falk of Pro-Serv “said, however, that Valentine will not report to the Clippers’ training camp.” Arn Tellem, Clipper general counsel said: “He’ll play for the Clippers or he’s not going to play.”
Then Tellem mocked Valentine: “I applaud Darnell Valentine’s courageous move to pass up a three-year guaranteed contract that totals close to $1 million and return to his home in Lawrence, Kan. I wish I had the privilege of making such career decisions. Unfortunately, I have to work for a living.”
Falk rebutted: “I’m surprised and disappointed that the Clippers would match the offer. I feel it is very unlikely that he will play for the Clippers this year. There was a lot of scar tissue and bad feeling created by the way the negotiations were handled.
“He doesn’t want to play for an organization that has made it clear that he doesn’t fit into their plans. And he will not report. I hope we can work with the team to have him moved somewhere else.”
Clipper general manager Elgin Baylor said: “We always intended to match the offer. We want to get Darnell here as soon as possible.”
It turned out Valentine reported with the Clippers and was in the team’s plans for the 1986-87 season. While his second and first full season in L.A. produced much better numbers, the Clippers struggled mightily with the worst record in the league at 12-70 and the lowest attendance in the NBA.
With Nixon gone, Valentine started 52 of 65 games while averaging 11.2 points, 6.9 assists (No. 2 best of career) and 1.8 steals in 27.1 minutes per contest, while shooting 41.0 percent from the floor, 23.2 percent from three-point range and a career-high 81.5 percent at the charity stripe. He also averaged a career high in field goal attempts per game (10.3.)
Valentine, who suffered an injury during the season, started the last 41 games of the season. He scored in double figures his first 10 games, including a season-high 24 points versus Golden State on Dec. 16 and then 23 points against Houston a week later. He had his best game in a 124-120 loss to San Antonio on Jan. 30, when he posted 24 points, 15 assists and five steals.
Despite becoming the starter and producing better numbers, Valentine was quite unhappy with the losing and the Clippers being the laughingstock of the NBA.
"Players have left the Clippers and done better, and it's not because they've suddenly become better players," Valentine told Sports Illustrated on March 23, 1987. "Some guys don't play well in difficult circumstances. You can take a good player and put him on this team, and things just get worse. He doesn't blossom. Some guys get traded here and they feel that because we're losing, they can just use this as a showcase to get traded to a better team. We have some players who play very intensely and others who don't put forth any effort at all. When you play for the Clippers, you feel like you're coming over on one of those boats from Cuba with all different kinds of people on it. There's just no pedigree with this team.”
SI’s Bruce Newman wrote this: “At 11-51 they are the worst team in the NBA this season; on a given night they may be the worst NBA team ever to play the game. If the Clippers had a credo—which they don't—it would probably be the one expressed by point guard Darnell Valentine: ‘You have to do as much as you can, as best you can, even if you can't.”
For Valentine, he did his “best,” but it wasn’t near enough to save the futile Clippers. He still couldn’t wait to move out of L.A.
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