<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">In a move that at last puts them on equal footing with their competitors, the Clippers will announce today that they have purchased land on the Westside to build a state-of-the-art practice facility and complete a $20-million deal. The Clippers, among a small and dwindling number of NBA teams without a practice site to call their own, will have one that is expected to rival the league's best when it opens before the 2006-07 season in the Playa Vista development near the intersection of the San Diego and Marina freeways. It will include two full basketball courts, executive offices, digital-video center, weight room and other training facilities in about 35,000 square feet. The project will be fully funded by owner Donald Sterling, delivering on a promise he made when he hired Coach Mike Dunleavy in 2003 and signaling that he is serious about reversing the on-court fortunes of a team that has known little success. The Clippers had considered other sites, among them the Home Depot Center in Carson, but targeted the Playa Vista development in recent years. Dunleavy, who as coach of the Portland Trail Blazers was headquartered in a practice facility considered to be one of the NBA's finest, had consistently lobbied Clipper management to provide players with a better place to prepare. "Ultimately, if you have your own place, have your own offices, your weight room there ? the whole bit ? you get your guys there a lot, hanging [out] with each other," he said. "They get to know each other better, create better relationships." The Clippers practiced last season and will again next at a Spectrum health club in El Segundo, two stops south on the Green Line from where the Lakers practice. Before that, they practiced for several years at L.A. Southwest College after the Lakers vacated the campus gym in 2000 and moved to the HealthSouth Training Center in El Segundo, which was built by Anschutz Entertainment Group at a cost of $24 million and also houses the Kings' facilities.</div> Source
This is good news on Sterling's part. I'd like to see the Clippers become one of the NBA's elite, espeically with Shaun Livingston and Co.
I'm actually working on the Playa Vista development as a Native American Archaeological Monitor. When I monitored the area where the Clippers facility is going to be built, they didn't dig far enough to reach native soil, but they did run into historic features, most notably part of an old railroad. They're actually still developing the area, but I'm going to see if I can get hooked up with a job at the facility. That would be sick. Anyways, I decided to add a bit of visualization to this thread by using Google Earth. The area south of Jefferson Blvd and North of Loyola Marymount University, stretching across this picture horizontally, is Playa Vista. Over 400 bodies of my ancestors have been found on that small piece of land. That big hangar you see is where Howard Hughes had the Spruce Goose built. As you can kinda see I labeled the area where the Clippers facility will be, although the label is a bit cut off: This is where the Clippers training facility WILL be (zoomed in):
Awesome........I guess Sterling isnt too cheap after all. This is great. The Clippers are way over due for some success and I can't wait to see this all play out.
