The Lakers have been part of Los Angeles culture for generations. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James have all helped make the franchise synonymous with the city. That makes Clippers owner Steve Ballmer’s challenge unusually difficult. He cannot simply buy history.
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There is no realistic way to erase the Lakers’ place in Los Angeles overnight. Instead, his approach has been much more ambitious: build a new generation of Clippers fans from the ground up.
“I play for the Clippers, right? Steve Ballmer got [expletive] money. ‘I don’t need no partners. I don’t need no help.’ Every single playground in Los Angeles is a Clippers playground,” Former three-time Sixth Man of the Year Lou Williams recalled on his podcast, The Underground Lounge.
“We used to ask him, like, ‘Why you do the things you do?’ He said, ‘I want the Los Angeles Clippers to have an imprint on this city. Because I realized I’m not going to flip a Lakers fan over to a Clippers fan, but I can grow Clipper fans from the bottom up.'”
That push for an identity also led Steve Ballmer to give the Clippers a home of their own. The more than $2 billion Intuit Dome in Inglewood was built to give the franchise an arena it could call its own, away from the Lakers’ shadow. Its standout features include the 51-row “Wall” and a massive Halo Board designed to make Clippers games louder and more immersive.
The organization has also backed its vision of growing Clippers fans with tangible support. In 2023, the Clippers Foundation donated $5.3 million to the Los Angeles County Parks Foundation to fund the Clippers Community Courts program, an initiative designed to refurbish and improve all 117 basketball courts operated by the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation.
Those courts span 60 parks across Los Angeles County, including neighborhoods where quality recreational facilities and youth programs can be harder to find. The broader idea is to invest in communities while tying the Clippers brand to places where young players spend their time.
The project also builds on the Clippers Foundation’s partnership with the City of Los Angeles. Combined, those efforts have pushed the number of Clippers Community Courts across Southern California to nearly 500. For Clippers fans, that represents something bigger than a marketing campaign.
Fans have naturally taken different views of the plan. Some see it as Steve Ballmer finally attacking the Lakers’ dominance in a way that could have a lasting impact. Others believe the Lakers’ cultural hold over Los Angeles is simply too deep to be displaced.
That mindset has not gone unnoticed by Lakers fans. As the Clippers have expanded their presence across the city, some have viewed the effort as a direct challenge to the Lakers’ long-established grip on Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles Times highlighted that tension, noting how the Clippers have pushed campaigns such as “Street Lights Over Spotlights” and “L.A. Our Way” as part of their effort to establish their own identity. Lakers fan Tim Ungvari questioned the approach.
“If you win you’re going to grow a fan base, you don’t have to go after other people’s fans to do it,” he said.
Steve Ballmer has never concealed his ambition to make the Clippers a more integral part of Los Angeles. During the 2022 unveiling of the franchise’s 350th renovated community court, he emphasized that supporting local youth remains his top priority.
“Impacting kids’ lives is really what it’s about,” Ballmer said. But he also acknowledged that building those connections could have another benefit for the Clippers.
“But if we get a few fans out of it, I’m good with that too. We’re one fan at a time, we’re scratching, we’re clawing. C’mon, man, that’s why we’re here. We’re here to win championships, excite fans and help kids.”
The Lakers may still own Los Angeles in the hearts of most fans, but Steve Ballmer isn’t sitting around waiting for that to change. For the Clippers, this was never really about trying to steal fans from the other side of town – it’s about building something of their own, from the ground up, for the people who are already theirs.