If work continues to progress at a good pace, the Clippers should start the 2024/25 season in a new venue, the Intuit Dome, and in a new city, Inglewood.
The franchise will therefore leave Los Angeles, 40 years after its arrival in 1984. A departure which has already been done, symbolically, for some time since on the official NBA website, we can read “LA Clippers” and no longer “ Los Angeles Clippers”.
“We were the only team in the league that we didn’t know if we were talking about us or not when we said Los Angeles,” notes Gillian Zucker, president of business operations for the Clippers, referring to the Lakers, for The Athletic. “It’s not like New York, with the Knicks, because in Brooklyn, it’s the Nets. So I felt it was important to make a distinction. When you see LA or Los Angeles, then you know who you’re talking about. That’s what prompted this change, which is not really official. We still have shirts that say Los Angeles. This is simply to create distinction in the league standings. »
As the Clippers will soon leave Los Angeles and no longer use this terminology completely, why not take advantage of the move to completely change the name of the franchise? It was indeed in the pipes, but the fans questioned were against it.
“We asked the question and the answer was clear: people were violently opposed to the idea of changing the name of the team”, assures the manager. “We conducted surveys with professional institutes. What people have told us is that the Clippers matter to them, they represent and mean something. This team has a direction, has been through things, and people are attached to all that. It’s important to them and we didn’t want it to go away. »
