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Kevin Arnovitz, the Fray editor at Slate, writes a confessional piece admitting that he is a Clippers fan and ponied up $1,700 for a pair of upper-deck season tickets at Staples Center. His case is that he is not alone -- the Clips sold more tickets last season than half of NBA teams -- and that his is the team of L.A's Lakers-eschewing hipsters.
Who are these people? What propels a relatively smart basketball fan into an alliance with an undeniable stink bomb, all the while rejecting one of the sexiest sports franchises on the planet?...The most obvious reason to root for the Clippers is that they're cheaper. A front row, center court seat in the upper deck runs a Lakers fan $35, while the same seat costs $20 at a Clippers game in the same stadium. Lower deck between the baselines: $187.50 versus $90...
A disproportionate number of Clippers fans are expats who hail from the I-95 corridor and could never stomach the Lakers the way they could the Kings and Dodgers. Cheering for the Lakers would constitute the ultimate sin: bandwagoning. And even if it wasn't, it would seem like it...
The Hipster Factor: Particularly during the promising 2000-01 campaign, when then-rookies Darius Miles and Quentin Richardson patented their fists-on-skull gesture and the team seemed poised for the playoffs, the Clippers established legitimate cred in Los Angeles...
Much of the Clippers' newfound support came from hipsters in the gentrified neighborhoods east of Highland Avenue. These writers, graphic designers, and animators exist in the same professional universe as those inhabiting the lower bowl of Staples during a Lakers game, but they harbor a disdain for their neighbors that can be expressed only though metaphor. And in terms of sports fandom, the Clippers are that metaphor.
So far this season, Donald Sterling's team has a 1-2 record.