The G League Ontario Clippers are relocating to Oceanside, Calif., next season and will be nostalgically rebranded as the San Diego Clippers. San Diego was home to the NBA’s Clippers from 1978-84 before then-owner Donald Sterling moved the team to L.A. Forty years later — with the San Diego suburb of Oceanside planning to open 7,500-seat Frontwave Arena this summer — Clippers owner Steve Ballmer has made the retro decision to bring the G League version of the franchise back to the county. Until they arrive, the current Ontario (Calif.) Clippers will finish the 2023-24 season playing at 11,089-seat Toyota Arena. The team will begin selling San Diego Clippers merchandise today at 9 am PT at SDClippersHQ.com.
Next season’s San Diego Clippers will be part of Halo Sports & Entertainment, Ballmer’s week-old umbrella brand that also encompasses the L.A. Clippers, the soon-to-open Intuit Dome and the Kia Forum. Halo and CEO Gillian Zucker will partner with Frontwave Arena to oversee the team’s business operations, while Clippers president Lawrence Frank will run basketball operations.
“So much of our history runs deep here,” Zucker said at an Oceanside news conference Monday announcing the move. “And as we have been doing a lot of research about brand, what we’ve discovered is that tradition is important to people. And we’ve also discovered a massive fan base in this part of Southern California.
“For us it’s very exciting to be able to lean into that by bringing our G League [team] here and having this proximity. It’s an expansion of our broadcast market, and we’re excited that we’ll be able to really maximize the opportunity for people here to be able to enjoy both teams for broadcast. Lots and lots of opportunities to lean deeply into the long history of the Clippers in San Diego.”
San Diego has a complicated pro basketball legacy, due in part to 58-year-old San Diego Sports Arena, now known as Pechanga Arena. The city housed the NBA’s San Diego Rockets from 1967-71, before losing the team to Houston, and later saw the Clippers (who arrived in the late 1970s from Buffalo) bolt for L.A. From 1972-75, the city was also home to the ABA’s San Diego Conquistadors (later Sails) who ended up disbanding. The common denominator was the underfunded and eventually dilapidated San Diego Sports Arena, which actually played host to the 1975 NCAA men’s Final Four — UCLA coach John Wooden’s final championship.
The new Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, about 30 miles north of downtown, is the county’s first non-college basketball venue to be built since 1966 (San Diego State christened Viejas Arena in 1997 while Univ. of San Diego opened Jenny Craig Pavilion in 2000). Adorned with 16 luxury suites, VIP viewing decks, exclusive lounges and an open-air patio, Frontwave Arena also is adjacent to a fledgling residential area that Zucker and G League President Shareef Abdur-Rahim said will house the Clippers’ G League players.
“Gillian has shown an unbelievable passion for the Clippers organization,” said Abdur-Rahim. “I tell her I came into the NBA in 1996, and the Clipper organization that we see today is a very different Clipper organization than what I experienced when I came in. And that same passion has extended to the G League.”
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On this week’s Sports Media Podcast from the New York Post and Sports Business Journal, Peter King is the Big Get. SBJ’s Austin Karp chats with the recently retired sports media legend about what’s next, what story was the most difficult to cover and much more as they reflect on King’s legendary career. The Miami Herald’s Barry Jackson also joins the show to share who he thinks is up and who he thinks is down in sports media. Jackson also talks about Caitlin Clark’s potential to move WNBA viewership and the major decisions ahead for David Berson at CBS. Jackson and King also share their fond memories of Chris Mortensen. Later in the pod, SBJ’s Rob Schaefer chimes in with the latest on Netflix’s swing at tennis in Las Vegas and what’s coming at Indian Wells.
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