Excuse Me, but What’s That Smell?

I heard Ron Harper go off. I am still not sure what made him go off. Maybe losing to Milwaukee. Maybe the building. Maybe the people inside the building. Maybe the people for whom he works.

Combination of the four, is my guess.

“Get beat by a team like this. Ridiculous,” Harper began, getting warmed up.

One week before, he and the Clippers had brought down Shaquille O’Neal and company like a backboard. But then came losses at home to Minnesota and Milwaukee. Bad teams, man.

Harper harped at everything.

He said there should be “a lot of heads rollin’.” Then he said if he were in charge, “I might take my own head and roll it.”

Why? What’s wrong?

“Smell it,” he said.

Excuse me?

“Smell it. We stink. Point blank. We stink. Ain’t no way to hide it.”

He said the Clippers have no fun. Have no enthusiasm. Play better on the road. Prefer playing on the road.

“Oughta move all our home games and put ‘em on the road,” Harper said.

How come?

“Do you like drivin’ down here every day?” Harper asked.

Excuse me?

“I asked you, do you like drivin’ down here?”

You’re saying it’s the arena?

“I’m saying it’s everything. We got a lot of bull . . . we just don’t like as players. I don’t care how many nice planes you fly on or nice hotels you stay at, there’s still something that (synonym for inhales).”

Playing here?

“Still something that (same word),” Harper repeated.

It was candid and cryptic, all in one breath. Disparaging the Clippers is nothing new. Yet, hadn’t the team looked so good last week? Hadn’t the new center, Elmore Spencer, handled the Shaq? Hadn’t the stands been close to filled?

Monday night’s attendance was announced at 9,553, which seemed a couple of thousand high. But it was a Monday, people were exhausted from Christmas shopping, they stayed home to watch football on TV or wrap gifts.

And Milwaukee was no draw, even with Ken Norman, who until earlier this month ranked as the Clippers’ all-time leading scorer. Norman turned up in Milwaukee’s garish new uniforms--”I look good in purple, don’t I?” Norman asked upon spotting an L.A. reporter--and prepared for his homecoming.

Eager to see the old Clipper crowd?

“Actually, I wanted to do something to get the crowd against me,” Norman said.

Excuse me? (This was a big night for excuse-mes.)

“I play better with the crowd against me,” Norman explained.

Apparently, so do the Clippers. Or at least that’s what Harper was contending.

“We play much better when we play on the road,” he said.

Why don’t you play better at home?

“We just don’t. Print that. We just don’t.”

OK. You just don’t.

Whereupon Harper was so agitated, he actually said: “And the longer it lasts, the frustrating it gets.” For a second there, I thought he was going to say frustratinger.

That’s how steamed he was.

“We just played Charles (Barkley) on Saturday in Phoenix,” Harper said. “He comes up to us before the game and he says: ‘We know that we’re gonna kick y’all’s . . . tonight, because y’all’s used to it.’ ”

But haven’t the Clippers looked good at times? “You could say that all day and night!” Harper snapped. “What good’s it gonna do?”

And in case you think Harper was alone in his thoughts, five feet away, guard partner Mark Jackson was ruminating along similar lines.

“I don’t want my career to end up like this,” Jackson said. “We have a whole bunch of problems. And if it’s going to stay this way, then get me out of here.”

No wonder Coach Bob Weiss shook his head and said, “Right now, we’re very fragile.”

So close to something good, the Clippers now seem closer to a mutiny. There’s one in the air, believe me. Smell it.