It was late into the night on Saturday as I and the other 20 or so LA Clippers fans stood up and drained out the sounds of boo’s from the Nuggets fans at the Pepsi Center and watched our beloved Clippers pull out a commanding road victory.

In the past, a win was hard to come by for the Clippers, let alone a road win during the playoffs at a high altitude.

Yet this season isn’t like the other 35 seasons in franchise history, it is very much different and records are being shattered about as fast as Rocky, the mascot of the Nuggets, dashes around the Pepsi Center.

For the first time in 30 years my sports love affair and the team that I have followed every game for the past 10 years could actually win a playoff series and advance to the next round. Not only can the Clippers advance to the second round, but advance to most likely face the inter-city nemesis, the Lakers.

As I stood in the final seconds of Saturday night’s victory not believing the score or the fact that, yes, my Clippers were on the verge of advancing, I started to think about the past…

There I was, an 8-year old kid walking into the old, shaggy and on this date empty LA Sports Arena, home to perennial underdogs and soon to be my favorite team, the Los Angeles Clippers of the NBA. The date was the mid-1990s, the opponent was the Utah Jazz and the occasion was my first of what would become numerous Clipper games.

As I handed the old gentleman my ticket and followed my dad on the glassy tiles of the concourse, I just remember how excited I was to peer onto the floor and see the players warm up. My dad and I climbed up the stairs to the upper level, traveled through the dark hallway, and stepped down the aisle to our third row seats. I could see the many pieces of aged gum from who knows how long ago as I sat down on the torn brown leather seats. This was no castle or Pepsi Center or Staples Center, which now is home to the Clippers, but it was the place were I finally found someone and something to relate to.

If you are a sports fan, you should know that the Los Angeles Clippers have never been the top franchise in not only the NBA, but possibly all of sports. This year my dream finally came true as the Clips made the playoffs for the first time in nine years.

For a kid growing up in Los Angeles everyone and everything was a Lakers fan. You never heard of a Clippers fan. Everyone wore the Lakers’ purple and gold T-shirts, pants, jackets and hats. You only wore Clippers apparel if you were going to paint or do other handy work around the house.

As you well know, there are a few celebrities that call Los Angeles their home. These Hollywood stars are an ideal match for the glitzy “Showtime” Lakers. You never saw Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Denzel Washington or other famous actors at Clippers games; instead, they spent their money on “Lake Show” tickets. Not only did the Lakers have thousands of fans coming to their games throughout the season, but they would even outnumber Clipper fans when the two teams would battle on the Clippers’ home court.

The Clippers first came into existence as the Buffalo Braves in 1970 and then moved to San Diego to become the Clippers in 1978. In 1981 current owner Donald Sterling bought the team and moved the team to LA after the 1984 season, when the average attendance dropped to below 4,500 per game.

I was one of the few wearing the red, white and blue jerseys of my beloved team throughout elementary, middle and high school. To tell you the truth, in the beginning years of my being a Clippers fan, it was sometimes scary to wear the gear, as I would be the only one and would be constantly harassed throughout the day by hard core Lakers fans. After a few years of toughening up, I would begin to increase my Clippers game total per season from two or three games to up to eight.

To tell you some more truth, I am and never have been one of the better students in the classroom in all of my years of education. I would study late into the LA night, get tutors, run out of ink on many yellow and orange highlighters, and build big muscles from the notes I wrote. After all of this hard work studying and memorizing everything from the history of Native Americans to Spanish to chemistry, the results were very similar much of the time and that was a disappointment. Occasionally the black ink of an A would be written at the top of my test, but more often than not a B, C or yes even a D would be there. All of my late nights, hard studying and countless cramming of words and phrases into my head sometimes were for naught.

This is where my earlier remarks of how I relate to the Clippers come into play. Throughout my 10 years of being a fan, the Clips have had their many struggles and were constantly losing seasons. The Clippers were worked very hard in practices to prepare for their games, but when it came time to take that test, called a game, the Clippers would often receive a c or d, or should I say a lose.

In middle and high school after doing hours of homework and studying and not being allowed to watch the games on television or the game not being on TV, I would lie on my bed and listen on the radio. I would sit down on my comfortable mattress and pretend to be reading my American history or chemistry book and turn the dial of my black radio and flashlight and listen to Ralph Lawler and Michael Smith call the games. The Clips would often be right in the thick of things until the last few minutes. This is when their shots would falter and their passes would sail out of bounds and their once 10-or-15-point lead and had slipped to a loss and another broken heart in a Clippers fan.

The days of Loy Vaught, Keith Closs, Lamond Murray, Pooh Richardson and Maurice Taylor are over and the new age team of Elton Brand, Corey Maggette, Sam Cassell and Cutino Mobley has finally brought success to this perennial losing franchise.

The Clippers may not have all the glitzy and glamour surrounding their franchise like the Lakers, but they do have a lot of heart and soul and fun and are now winning. I guess you could say that the Clips are the blue-collared team working in a white-collared city.

People always ask me why I became a Clippers fan, and I tell them that they have always been the underdog and in a way I consider myself one. Through all of the heart-breaking loses and trading away favorite players, I have remained strong with the Clippers and it has finally paid off.