The Audible: One fired, one hired, and … maybe one inducted?

Jim Alexander: I was trying to think of the last overnight sports development as stunning as the one that greeted us Wednesday morning: Chris Paul, who had been brought back by the Clippers as sort of an end-of-career salute, being told that his services were no longer wanted. I thought of describing it as sudden, except that as we read and hear more about it, CP3’s saltiness and perfectionist tendencies evidently were not appreciated on a team that was expected to contend for a title – or at least be on the fringes of contention again – but started the season 5-16 with him.

There are two things that jump out at me right away. Wednesday night after Paul was sent back home – he’s in roster limbo for the next couple of weeks until roster rules enable the Clippers to trade him or let him go – the Clippers really did look like world-beaters in swamping Atlanta. And the other curious event: They played a scoreboard tribute to Paul during a timeout at a recent home game. Was this a subtle goodbye from Lawrence Frank and his staff before anyone was aware of what was about to happen?

There are lots of stories floating around, some of which might even be true – Paul supposedly disparaging the front office’s moves, Paul and Ty Lue said to have been not speaking for weeks, Paul (according to a social media post that does sound exaggerated in a gossipy sort of way) allegedly throwing a barb at Kawhi Leonard in the dressing room that supposedly led to Kawhi getting up and walking out. I’m not sure which if any actually occurred (or whether there was more outrageous stuff that actually did happen).

And I’m sure, Mirjam, that your experiences with the Clipper front office’s penchant for keeping things way too close to the vest provide an interesting perspective to the manner in which the decision to bring Paul back turned from triumphant homecoming to blowing up in their faces.

Mirjam Swanson: Yeah, it’s hard to know what to think without having been in the rooms where things went so sideways.

I think, foremost, it’s so on brand that what was supposed to be, in part (in large part?), a good public relations move for the Clippers wound up being such an unmitigated PR disaster.

Frank, the Clips’ president of basketball operations, stressed in a video conference on Wednesday that there was no single event that led to the move, rather weeks of discourse and considerations. If that’s true, then the Clippers really should have gone out of their way to make this move as carefully and respectfully as possible to avoid it blowing up in their faces. Not, you know, flying out to meet arguably the most impactful player in franchise history in the middle of the night in the middle of a road trip to break up with him, flight delays notwithstanding.

If there wasn’t a piece of proverbial straw that broke the camel’s proverbial back, it seems like this discussion could have waited until business hours and until the team got home – if it couldn’t have happened before everyone flew east.

The move itself? Well, the first thing rookie Kobe Sanders said during his postgame radio interview after Wednesday’s pretty big win after he was asked about the wild day that was in Clipperdom? He said: “We had great leadership today in the locker room.”

Take that as you will.

We’ve probably all been in rooms – office spaces, locker rooms, living rooms – where one person’s energy isn’t a good fit, where that one person can put everyone else on edge. If that’s the case here – and the Clippers are bending over backward to insist Paul is not the scapegoat for their horrid start to the season – then there’s a world where the move might make sense, as unpopular as it is.

Yes, the Clippers should have known as well as anyone what they were signing up for when they signed CP3. But Frank took the L for that, admitted multiple times he was wrong for expecting it would work (without specifying what didn’t work). With Tyronn Lue as their coach and Kawhi Leonard as their star, the Clippers do have a relatively cool-headed temperature to them – for better or worse. But usually, in those instances when Leonard is healthy, it’s been for better.

So we’ll see whether subtracting Paul from the equation will help this team that is still almost entirely composed of NBA players who are past their prime or yet to hit it. It’s still a team with a ton of issues – though, perhaps one fewer now, from the team’s perspective?

Jim: There’s a way to handle situations, and this isn’t it. With all of the other factors involved, the bottom line is that this was at least a clumsy way to deal with a player whose jersey ideally would go up in the Intuit Dome rafters someday. Then again, will the Clippers ever have reasons to hang anything from the rafters?

Next topic: UCLA has a new football coach, finally, and – unlike some high-profile hirings, including one that I wrote about a couple of days ago – Bob Chesney will actually get to coach in the College Football Playoff, should James Madison make the field of 12 when it’s announced Sunday, before beginning his duties at UCLA.

My biggest question about this move? We might even get the answer when Chesney is introduced to the L.A. media at some point:

Bob, do you really – REALLY – know what you’re getting into here? An athletic department that has been running at a deficit, uncertainty about where your team will play its home games going forward, and a fan base so discouraged that lots of UCLA fans stayed home from last week’s rivalry game with USC. You do realize this is going to require more than X’s and O’s to straighten this thing out, right?

UCLA is gambling a bit, although Chesney’s track record seems solid. The university is trying to catch lightning in a bottle the same way Indiana did with Curt Cignetti, who was Chesney’s predecessor at James Madison and now has the Hoosiers headed for the playoff. (Any chance of an IU-JMU playoff matchup? Wouldn’t that be wild?)

And there’s a lot at stake – for the school and its athletic department, and particularly for Athletic Director Martin Jarmond. He whiffed badly with the Deshaun Foster hire. I can’t imagine Jarmond staying employed in Westwood if this one doesn’t work out.

You wrote about it for Tuesday’s paper, Mirjam. Any additional thoughts?

Mirjam: Basically, I think UCLA and its search committee get credit for seeing what’s behind Door No. 3 instead of doing what they’ve done with every hire since 1971, the last time they tabbed a sitting coach to take over. It’s always been an in-house promotion or a (usually unemployed) guy from the NFL … and that’s worked out less often than it’s worked.

Let’s see if the guy who is proven at doing more with less can also do more with more.

UCLA’s financial deficit notwithstanding, it’s still UCLA, it’s still the Big Ten. The Bruins are flying charters and eating right and, yes, getting paid something too; Chesney’s players at Division III Salve Regina used to have to drive to and from campus in full pads because they practiced at a middle school without a locker room.

There’s also more pressure here, different responsibilities – but someone who has steadily climbed the ladder, succeeding at each step of the way, he should get an opportunity to show what it looks like when he gets to a top rung. That’s how it’s supposed to work. I like stories of people working their way up way more than all the stories about people failing upward. You know?

Jim: That would be a pleasant change.

Last topic of the week: The late Fernando Valenzuela is one of the candidates this weekend when the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Contemporary Era Committee – a 16-person body made up of Hall of Fame players, executives, media members, a historian and two owners (including the Angels’ Arte Moreno) – convenes to determine if any of the eight players on the ballot should join the Hall’s Class of 2026.

The ballot also includes Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, whose candidacies on the writers’ ballot never reached the 75% necessary for induction despite their career stats and because of the allegations of PED use. Also on the list are Don Mattingly, Jeff Kent, Dale Murphy, Gary Sheffield and Carlos Delgado. As in the regular writers’ voting, it takes 75% of the vote from this panel for induction, and none of the selectors can vote for more than three of the eight players listed.

Our friend Bill Shaikin at that other newspaper in town made the case for Fernando in print, and it’s the same one I would make. His career numbers (173-153, 3.54 ERA, 37.3 career WAR in 17 seasons) didn’t help him on the writers’ ballot in 2003 and 2004; he received 6.2% of the vote in ’03 and 3.8% in ’04, less than the 5% necessary to stay on the ballot.

But his importance transcends numbers and is a peculiarly Los Angeles story, which unfortunately might not translate in a Hall of Fame vote. Valenzuela’s impact when he reached the Dodgers in 1981, and for his 11 seasons as a Dodger before his shoulder wore down from overuse, was as evident in the Dodger Stadium seats as it was on the field, because it gave this community’s Latino fans a reason to come to the ballpark again. They had been estranged for years, going back to the clearing out of Chavez Ravine’s residents – nearly a decade before Walter O’Malley moved the Dodgers here.

As now-retired Dodgers Spanish language broadcaster Jaime Jarrín told me in a 2018 interview: “When I started with the Dodgers in 1959 at the Coliseum, the Latinos coming to the ballgames were about 8%. Now, at Dodger Stadium, they tell me it’s around 46% Latinos. And if you go during a game and take a walk around the ballpark inside, you will hear as much Spanish as English.”

You had to be there, I guess, to understand just how Fernando’s presence transformed the Dodgers’ fan base, especially after he started the 1981 season 8-0, all complete games, with five of them shutouts. He was a phenomenon that spring, not only in L.A. but throughout the U.S. and especially in Mexico.

He remained an icon not only through those 11 seasons here as a player (and 17 in all, including a short stint with the Angels in 1991 and two seasons and part of a third with the Padres, 1995-97) but as a Spanish broadcaster for the Dodgers over the last few years of his life. It was justice that Valenzuela had his number retired in 2023, just the second Dodger – after Jim Gilliam – to have his number retired without having gone into the Hall of Fame, and that he was able to enjoy that moment.

He passed away in October of 2024, and maybe it was fitting that it was right before a Dodgers-Yankees World Series. It enabled us to remember his 149-pitch complete game in Game 3 of the 1981 Series against the Yanks, a performance of which Vin Scully said, “It wasn’t his best performance, but it was his finest.”

I made the point when he died that he “might have been the most culturally influential of any player who wore a Los Angeles Dodgers uniform,” and in truth he was probably second only to Jackie Robinson in that category in the 142-year history of the Brooklyn-Los Angeles franchise.

Should he get enough votes for induction in Cooperstown, maybe that will lead to a Fernando statue in Dodger Stadium’s center field plaza. We can only hope.

Mirjam: Hear, hear, Jim. All of that!

Or as Dodgers president and CEO Stan Kasten called Valenzuela in an interview with our Bill Plunkett last year: “One of the most influential Dodgers ever” who “belongs on the Mount Rushmore of franchise heroes.” And as Orel Hershiser described Fernando: “A change agent.”

Attributes like that ought to get a guy into the Hall.