Los Angeles Clippers: The 5 Strangest Moments in Team History

If there's a team in the NBA that you would expect strange things to happen to, it's the Los Angeles Clippers.

Four straight decades of consistent losing (dating back to their days as the Buffalo Braves) don't come without some curious occurrences and puzzling decisions along the way.

Let's take a stroll down memory lane and examine some of the strangest moments in Clippers franchise history. 

5. Clippers Celebrate Black History Month...in the Wrong Month

Everyone who has lived in America in the last 35 years knows that Black History Month is celebrated in February. 

That is, everyone besides Donald Sterling, who decided to move it back a month.

Not that he's a sterling (forgive the pun, couldn't resist) figure in the African-American community. The Clippers owner has been sued numerous times for racial discrimination. He reviles his black tenants and doesn't show his black players any more respect.

Sterling has the reputation of not negotiating big contracts with black players and has reportedly brought women into the Clippers locker room after games to gaze at their "beautiful black bodies."

Disrespecting the entire month of black history just takes it to a whole 'nother level.

4. The Baron Davis Saga

Los Angeles native Baron Davis signed a five-year, $65 million deal in July of 2008 to come play for his hometown Clippers. 

In particular, to play with on the Clippers with his friend and fellow All-Star Elton Brand.

The Clippers were supposed to sign Brand to a multi-year extension to match the one they gave to Davis. It was widely rumored that Davis only signed with the Clips because the two friends had made a pact to team up in L.A.

However, Brand ended up bolting for Philadelphia, and Davis was left stranded on a suddenly terrible young Clippers team.

Baron promptly started mailing in games and did not deign to get in proper shape for the season. As Davis' subpar play and conditioning lingered into his second and even third season with the club, owner Donald Sterling actually took to heckling his starting point guard (and highest-paid player) from his courtside seats at home games.

Just as it seemed like Blake Griffin had finally rejuvenated Baron's career in 2011, Sterling did him the courtesy of shipping him off to the Cleveland Cavaliers (fresh off of an NBA record losing streak) to end Davis' rocky ride as a Clipper.

Sometimes, you just can't go home again... 

3. Moses Malone's Clippers Stopover

In 1976, the Clippers franchise (then the Buffalo Braves) acquired a promising young 21-year-old named Moses Malone from the Portland Trail Blazers for a 1978 first rounder and some spare change.

Malone played all of six minutes as a member of the Braves before they shipped him off to Houston a mere six days after acquiring him, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Malone went on to have a stellar career that included 12 All-Star selections, three MVP awards and a Finals MVP as well.

The Clippers got a hold of one of the five greatest centers in the history of the game and gave him up before ever giving him a chance to shine. It's clearly one of the biggest blunders in franchise history.

2. The 1998 Draft

The Clippers had the good fortune to own the No. 1 overall selection in the star-studded 1998 draft. With surefire talents littering the top of the draft board, there was no way the Clips could come out of the draft without a franchise building block.

But that's why they're the Clippers.

The Clips passed on sure things Mike Bibby, Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison and Paul Pierce to take a flier on a relatively unknown player they deemed had great potential.

No, I don't mean Dirk Nowitzki. Not even Rashard Lewis.

I'm speaking, of course, about Michael Olowokandi.

The Kandi-man was a 23-year-old center who had one good college season at the University of the Pacific, yet the Clippers saw something in him that not even Olowokandi's own mother could have seen. He went on to have a dismal nine-year career in the NBA, shooting a paltry 43.5 percent from the field. That's the worst mark of any big man taken first overall in the last two decades. Even worse than Andrea Bargnani, and he attempts nearly four threes a game!

Even the undrafted Brad Miller had a career that was infinitely more productive than Olowokandi's. Instead of a franchise player, the Clippers botched the pick and got another franchise punchline. 

1. The 1984 Draft

The strangest of all Clippers decision-making centered around the 1984 NBA draft. Two years after trading away young Moses Malone (that's 1978 for those of you too lazy to go back and see when the Moses trade happened and calculate accordingly), the Clippers traded a 1984 first round pick to Philadelphia for World B. Free. That 1984 pick would turn out to be the No. 5 pick overall. Hold that thought,

Now, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to trade a pick six years down the road for a proven NBA star. In fact, Free was second in the NBA in scoring in both his seasons with the Clippers, earning an All-Star selection in 1980. The problem was, the Clippers traded Free after just two seasons, just as he was entering the prime of his career at 26 years old, and fresh off of a season in which he scored better than 30 points per game and made the All-Star team.

The trade netted them a washed-up guy named Phil Smith and a 1984 first rounder that ended up being eighth overall. So in essence, the Clippers traded the No. 5 pick in the 1984 draft for a nobody and the No. 8 pick in the 1984 draft.

Why is this significant? Because the Clippers selected Lancaster Gordon eighth overall in '84, the same year that one Sir Charles Barkley was the fifth overall pick.

As if that wasn't enough, the Clippers also gave up on their 1981 first round pick, Tom Chambers (who went on to be selected to four All-Star teams and two All-NBA Second Teams), after just two seasons, shipping him off to Seattle for James Donaldson (don't even ask who that is, you need not fret over him) and the No. 14 pick in the 1984 draft. 

The Clippers used that pick on Michael Cage. John Stockton was selected two picks later. 

So the Clippers came out of what many consider to be the greatest draft of all time with Lancaster Gordon and Michael Cage. In a six year stretch, they traded Moses Malone, Tom Chambers, World B. Free, and a pick that ended up being Charles Barkley.

The 1985 Clippers could have featured Malone, Barkley, Chambers and Stockton, to go along with Bill Walton (already on the roster). Instead it featured, well, basically just Walton, whose poor health limited him to just 37 starts that season.

The best player on the Clippers in 1985, Derek Smith (who averaged 22.1 points per game) was picked up off of the waiver wire. Smith would never have even made the team if the Clippers' front office didn't fantastically botch the previous decade. Needless to say, the Clippers finished every season of the 1980's with a losing record.

Oh, what could have been...