On the Friday edition, Howard Beck welcomes NBA legends Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles, the cohosts of the popular Knuckleheads podcast. They reminisce about their early days with the Clippers and explain the origin of their iconic “two fists-to-the-forehead” celebration. They also weigh in on Dillon Brooks’s flagrant foul of Gary Payton II.
The following transcript is an excerpt from The Crossover NBA podcast. Listen to the full episode on podcast players everywhere or on SI.com.
Howard Beck: I think about your Clipper teams as like this era. There was this moment where the Clippers broke through, I think really for the first time. And we’ve had many starts and stops for that franchise since your time, right? It always seems like they’re on the verge of something and then it collapses. But with you guys, I remember you guys jumping on the scorers’ table at one point late in that first season.
Quentin Richardson: Yeah, last game of the season.
HB: And that was a 39-win season, I think. And that was like still a losing year, but you guys were so close to the playoffs and you captured the imagination of Clipper fans, of L.A. fans who were not Laker fans, of NBA fans, you’d become this kind of phenomenon. And so it was this moment, and it really only lasted two years if you count it from the day that Darius is drafted, to the day that you’re traded two seasons later. It’s amazing to me all these years later to think that was only a two-year run.
Darius Miles: A lot of people don’t really know that. Like I definitely know because I got traded and I didn’t want to get traded, so I definitely remember. But a lot of people remember that because we was all the way at the bottom. When we got to that team, they won 17 games out of 82. We started all the way to the bottom to just get a spark. You didn’t see a Clipper jersey nowhere. The whole ’90s, some of the ’80s, you ain’t see nobody wearing a Clipper jersey. And now, like when we got there, you started seeing Clipper jerseys in all the videos, people wearing the Clipper jersey on all these shows and all this stuff. And you know, it seemed like it was a lot because it started from nothing to something. But where it’s grown to now, it’s just amazing to see.
QR: The thing that’s crazy is how it was two years. So you gotta think about like, even for me, me and D didn’t talk about it. Being there during that time and being there for those two years, like we’ve gone back and been celebrated as like the faces of that era. And while we were in that, you never could have told us sitting there that this ain’t Elton Brand and Lamar Odom’s team, you know what I’m saying? So for us to come back … ’cause for 18 seasons we’d go there to the Staples Center and you know, they showing the different eras and they showing me and him more than anything and they got us there for it. So, you know, that’s crazy that out of everything, like that’s the part that they grab hold of out of that era. That’s the images, us doing the knucklehead.
DM: Especially for me ’cause Q played for four years, but I only played two. And if anybody sees me or knows me or they remember something or they like, Man, I know you from somewhere, they instantly call out "Clipper" before any other team I played for. And I played for other teams longer than that.
HB: That’s wild. Guys, I don’t know that there’s another version of this, right? There are other teams that have been fun for a short period of time. I think of even like, there’s those Sacramento Kings teams, but they had a longer run than that. And they also, of course, went to the conference finals. Your team, for a team that did not make the playoffs, did not produce multiple Hall of Famers or anything—like Elton Brand and Lamar Odom, obviously both had very successful, long careers and were All-Stars. It’s amazing; I cannot think off the top of my head of another team that kind of captured the imagination in that way and had such a currency in the culture, right? You guys made an impression, which is its own point of pride I would think still all these years later.
QR: I mean that’s one of the main reasons that we’re able to do what we’re doing. You know what I’m saying? Because to hear peers of ours, you know, like Jamal Crawford on our show, and he’s like, Man, they was the popular dudes doing what they was doing. Like everybody wanted to play the way they was playing in L.A. Like, you know what I’m saying? Like they knew that we was out there having fun, we were really good friends, we all rocked with each other. So it was a different type of vibe. And everybody loved it. Like me and D could be going to the airport, flying somewhere to go do something, and it could be like a 36-, 35-year-old dude to come run up, like, random guy, like, Man, when I was in seventh, eighth grade or whatever. … The thing about it is it could be anything. It could be an Asian guy, Black guy, Indian guy, white guy; it could be anything. And they just be like, Dude, you don’t even understand, my high school team, this team or whatever team, they always got a story. And it's crazy to me that it was really that big of a deal.
HB: Why do you think it ended so soon? And I assume the easiest answer is Donald Sterling.
QR: The crazy thing about that is that nobody thought that [Miles] would be going first.
DM: Yeah, we thought I was the untouchable out of everybody on the team.
QR: He was a unicorn; he’s not going nowhere out of anybody.
DM: Yeah, and that just, that kind of threw everybody off. We needed a point guard because Jeff McInnis wouldn’t come back and to get Andre Miller, like Jason Kidd and Andre Miller … when I got to the league, they were two guys I wanted to play with ’cause they passed the best to me. You know what I’m saying? Then I get traded for them, it’s like, Ah, y’all trade me away for the guy that I want to play with? So I didn’t understand the move. But back then, a lot of people wanted the Clippers with like a different team, you know?
QR: Yeah, when it initially happened, Howard, I told them to trade me, too. I mean, me and him had the same agent, Jeff Wechsler. I said, Nah, tell them to trade me, too. I was the one who wasn’t even supposed to be here. I had been trying to get traded from the jump because I didn’t get to play that much. I wasn’t getting a whole lot of playing time my first year. But no way we thought D would have got traded. When that happened I was like, O.K., now the whole business of everything has came straight to our front door, the business of the NBA. I can remember that, like I was pissed. I was pissed.
