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Clippers Marketing Themselves as 'Real LA' is Completely Disingenuous and Insulting to Lakers Fans

By Sean Facey

The Los Angeles Clippers look like fools for their new marketing campaign.
The Los Angeles Clippers look like fools for their new marketing campaign. / FREDERIC J. BROWN/Getty Images

The NBA's battle for Los Angeles has taken a plainly disrespectful turn.

The Clippers have launched a new marketing campaign that means to position them to represent the "Real LA." It's an attempt to brand themselves as the team of the city and its people while deingrating the perceived Hollywood glitz and glamour of the Lakers.

However, the move is a massive miscalculation that completely disregards the actual fans who support the Lakers for the right reasons.

There's more to the Laker fanbase than Jack Nicholson, Lou Adler, and a parade of Hollywood superstars. Countless hard-working human beings throughout southern California live and die by the Purple and Gold. They come from all walks of life and all backgrounds.

Plenty of people from minority communities and underserved areas of Los Angeles find a sense of community and pride in following the Lakers, just like fans of any other big-time team.. Just because there isn't a camera in their face every day or because they don't sit courtside 41 times per season doesn't mean these people aren't there.

And it's wrong for the Clippers to even remotely suggest such a thing -- that they have a monopoly on "the common fan" in LA. And it looks even worse considering that the Clips are owned by the single richest man in the entire NBA community, Steve Ballmer.

We saw just how many different kinds of people truly love the Lakers after Kobe Bryant's death. We learned that the team has united people across cultural and socioeconomic barriers. No marketing campaign can change that.

Those were, and are, the real fans of the Lakers. The real basketball fans of Los Angeles.

Trying to re-brand the Clippers like this is cheesy and despicable. It shows that they don't authentically care about the makeup of the city that they play in, nor do they have any interest in acknowledging the cultural reach of the Lakers. All that matters to them is tearing down their LA rivals and putting butts in seats through any means necessary.