Book review – Ralph Lawler ranks with Scully, Hearn, but lacked their audience
by Paul Teetor
Over the last half century Los Angeles sports fans had the rare privilege of listening to three of the greatest play-by-play broadcasters ever: Chick Hearn, Vin Scully and…Ralph Lawler.
Ralph who?
Ralph Lawler, who introduced just as many hoops catchphrases as Scully did for baseball, and Hearn for basketball. The difference was Lawler announced for the Clippers, who had only a fraction of the millions of fans who made up Lakers Nation and Dodgers Nation.
You didn’t have to be a Dodgers fan to appreciate Scully, the most eloquent baseball voice in the last half of the 20th century. He passed, as everyone knows, just a few months ago, and was given the world-wide recognition he deserved during a week-long farewell.
Nor did you have to be a Lakers fan to appreciate Hearn, the most creative, trailblazing basketball voice in the last half of the 20th century, which of course coincided with the ascendance of hoops – high school, college and pro – to the top of the sports pyramid, second only to that most American of pastimes, football.
But you did have to be a Clippers fan to appreciate just how great Lawler was as the voice of the Clippers for 40 years, until he retired in 2019. When the Clippers acquired Paul George and Kawhi Leonard that same summer, All Ball noted the great irony that Lawler would not be around to tell the story of the Clippers as they entered what, presumably, would be their championship time in the sun.
Clippers announcer Ralph Lawler’s autobiography has forward by Bill Walton, Introduction by Paul George, and afterword by Doc Rivers.
Luckily for all of us, Lawler, at 84, is still around to tell his story as he does in his new book, “Bingo: forty years in the NBA.”
It’s a rollicking ride through the blessed life of a hoops junkie who hit the motherlode: broadcasting his favorite team’s games for 40 years. It’s a sports fan’s dream, and the book reads like it.
To Lawler, as nice a man who ever sat down behind a microphone to paint flowing word pictures of the action going on in front of him, almost everyone he met along the way was a sweetheart of a guy – players, coaches and executives.
Make that everyone he met, with two glaring exceptions: former Clippers star Blake Griffin and former Clippers owner Donald Sterling.
Of Griffin, who was drafted number one overall by the Clippers in 2009, Lawler says he too was a nice guy and even a sweetheart when he entered the league.
“I found him to be a nice young man. He was polite, engaged and genuinely down to earth,” Lawler writes. “I told Blake that I wanted to introduce him to my wife. He hopped over the press table to give her a hug. I just thought to myself, this guy is truly amazing.”
But Griffin’s rookie season was ruined when he broke his left kneecap during a pre-season game and he had to sit out the entire season.
“He spent some time on air with us during his rehabilitation; I was pulling hard for a full and complete recovery,” Lawler recalls.
But gradually the sweetheart became a classic diva.
“Over the years, something changed in Blake,” Lawler writes. “He was on many national television commercials. He was a stand-up comic. Maybe things went to his head, I don’t know. It happens.”
A few months after the Clippers signed Griffin to a five-year, $171 million contract they traded him to Detroit.
“He clearly felt betrayed…not too many people with a five-year, $171 million contract feel betrayed, but he did,” he writes “At Detroit I saw him before the game in the passageway leading to the court. It was a narrow hallway, and as he jogged by we said hello and held out a hand for a high five. He didn’t even look at us. I know he saw and heard us. It was like we didn’t exist.”
A few weeks later, when the Pistons came to LA to play the Clippers, Griffin gave owner Steve Ballmer the same dismissive treatment.
“Ballmer went to shake Blake’s hand, but the player blew him off,” Lawler writes. “You never know what’s going on inside someone’s head, but given how wonderful, warm and unspoiled Griffin was in the beginning, this was one of the biggest personality changes I’ve ever witnessed in my life.”
When it came to former owner Sterling, who ran the team for 35 of Lawler’s 40 years with them, the problem was that there was never any personality change at all. He was a racist, arrogant, penny-pinching obnoxious jerk from the day he bought the team till the day he was forced to sell it – for $2 billion – in 2014.
Sterling’s downfall has been well chronicled – FX even produced a mini-series about it this year called The Sterling Affairs – but Lawler adds to the infamous legend of Sterling as the worst pro sports owner ever with details of his personal and professional encounters with him over the years.
While the audience for this book is limited to sports fans, it certainly is not limited to just Clippers fans or even to just basketball fans. Anyone interested in an inside look at how a pro sports team really operates will find this a page turner.
As far as hitting the literary target, this book deserves the same catchphrase Lawler used when a Clipper hit a big three-pointer: Bingo!
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. follow:@paulteetor