With Clippers games just under a week away (if you count the scrimmages), it seemed like a good time to get back into our Clippers spirit. And what better way to do so than getting the staff of 213Hoops together to describe our Clippers fan origin stories! What follows is a brief description from much of our staff on how we became invested in the Clips as a team and as a fandom.

Adam Horowitz (aka boltsfan): In the summer of 1978, on the first day that season tickets went on sale after the Buffalo Braves moved to San Diego and became the Clippers, my dad trucked down to the SD Sports Arena and picked up four second-row, center-court seats. And there we sat for all 41 games the next six years, from my 10th birthday to nearly my 16th, until that f@*&ing a$$hole Donald Sterling broke his promise to San Diego and trucked the team up the I-5. Unlike most San Diegans, though, Clippers fandom was already so deep in my blood that I stuck with them. Or, to put it another way, I’m loyal to a fault and deeply masochistic.

Erik Olsgaard: I grew up in the Bay Area, and while I’d always rooted for the hometown Warriors, I didn’t really have a way to watch basketball until the playoffs when they’d finally show hoops on non-cable TV—so I was really just a fan of individual players. By 2004, I’d moved to LA for college, and my girlfriend (now wife) got me to start watching the Clippers, since she was a diehard fan. I am a sucker for underdogs, so when the Clippers went a round further than the Lakers in 2005-06, I knew that I needed to see this team win it all one day. But it was the incredibly loyal fanbase, especially the online community, that sealed the deal for me.

Kenneth Armstrong: My dad and I went to a random Clippers game during the 2002-03 season and had a great time. So, on a whim, he got us season tickets for the 2003-04 season, and we’ve had them since (I was about 9 when we started). Our first seats were in Section 216, where there were about ten other season ticket holders right around us. We became a family: the couple in front of us had a baby, people went into business together, others retired, and so on. The Clippers were consistently bad, but it felt good to be there with our Clippers family. Our crew eventually scattered around the arena and the influx of new fans in the early 2010s made it tougher to connect during games. However, when we do see each other, it’s always a reminder that I first loved the Clippers as a community, not just as a basketball team.

Steve Perrin: I’ve lived in the LA area since I was six, and I can honestly say that Jerry West was at one time my favorite player (and unfortunately I was old enough to have a decent opinion on the matter). I continued to root for the Lakers through the Showtime years, but a confluence of factors (Shaq and Kobe were NOT Wilt and West nor Kareem and Magic, not to mention that at heart I would much prefer to root for an underdog) led me to the Clippers in the early 90s. My Clipper fandom was solidified in the Larry Brown playoff teams, and I’ve been pretty diehard ever since, through MANY ugly seasons and few good ones.

Thomas Wood: My dad ran a wheel business for much of my childhood. Tony Massenburg was one of my dad’s customers during his lone season with the Clippers and kicked us tickets to a couple games. I assume Tony had trouble offloading his Clipper tickets, because I’m not sure the guy he bought wheels from once or twice would otherwise rank very highly. Either way, the first game I saw was a double-overtime victory over Boston, and the rest, they might say, was misery. I didn’t care though. I didn’t know any other Clipper fans, so the team felt like mine and mine alone. Plus, parking at the Sports Arena was easy. Twenty-five years on, the Clippers still kinda feel like they belong only to me, but it’s nice to know others that probably feel the same way too.

Michelle Uzeta: I was born in New York and grew up a Knicks fan. At the time, the Los Angeles Lakers were one of the franchise’s biggest rivals. It only made sense that when I moved to LA a couple decades ago that I would forego the “showtime” squad for the city’s blue-collar co-habitant. Streetlights over spotlights, as they say.

Robert Flom: I grew up a sort-of Lakers fan, but my favorite players as a kid were Allen Iverson and Kevin Garnett. I therefore didn’t have any strong attachments to a particular team, and was more than happy to cheer for any squad in a given game. However, I slowly started becoming a Clippers fan after the Clips drafted Blake Griffin, as his joining Eric Gordon and other youngsters seemed like the makings of a fun squad. Griffin’s rookie season was so dazzling that I began tuning into Clippers’ games on a daily basis, and the rest is history.

Chris Murch: I remember it vividly. I was five years old and watching a Lakers preseason game in my kitchen on a TV about the size of a cereal box. I remember watching them and just being like “nah”, and immediately started rooting for the Clippers. Right then I made a choice to be a mostly miserable sports fan for my existence up until this point, and wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Shapan Debnath: I grew up in a Laker household, but I couldn’t connect with the Lakers. For some time I did follow players, but became attached to the Odom era Clippers and my fandom particularly had a lot of its early foundation in that Brand/Cassell playoff run.

Well, so much for all of our stories. But let’s hear yours! In the comments below, lay out your own Clippers fan origin stories, and explain why you fell for this mostly frustrating franchise.

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