Sports
Column: 'When am I gonna come back?' A lifelong Clippers fan sees them in person for first time
Nelson Rodriguez has rooted for the Clippers his entire life, but the fandom of the Santa Ana resident was out of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
The 37-year-old never owned an article of the team’s clothing growing up, or even as an adult. He can only keep up with them on social media since Nelson doesn’t subscribe to Bally Sports or the NBA’s streaming service. The financial planner works in an office of Lakers fans. His wife, Cynthia, only cares for the Dodgers when it comes to sports.
And until I took my dear friend to the Clippers home game Monday night against the Miami Heat, Nelson had never seen his team in person.
“I don’t know anyone besides you who’d want to go,” he said as we drove up to the Intuit Dome from Orange County around 4 that afternoon. We left early so we could grab a bite to eat at Con’i Seafood, then wander around the new arena. “If it was Lakers, you’d have 20 hands go up. If I said, ‘Let’s go to an Angels game,’ people would want to go.
“But,” he concluded with a pained smile, “it’s the Clippers.”
His dad, a Salvadoran immigrant, taught him to love the team while Nelson was growing up in Buena Park. He stuck with them through the Clippers’ lost years of the 1990s and 2000s because “I love going for the underdog. When you’re an Angels fan, it’s easy. The Lakers were always the cool option. They get enough praise. They get the famous fans. We get Billy Crystal.”
Nelson’s devotion paid off with the Lob City years, whose trademark dunking and slashing with players like Blake Griffith, DeAndre Jordan and Chris Paul “is how the NBA should be played.” He was further drawn in with the 2019 signing of his favorite basketball player, Kawhi Leonard.
“He beat the [Golden State] Warriors with the [Toronto] Raptors single-handedly and shut up those bandwagon fans,” he cracked as we enjoyed aguachile and fish chicharrones at Con’i. When I asked what he liked about Leonard, Nelson replied, “He’s super quiet, but laser-focused and lets his actions speak for him.”
Very much like Nelson, come to think of it.
I asked how the Clippers’ season was going as we made the five-minute drive from Con’i to Intuit Dome.
“Good, considering Kawhi has been out for so long. The fact the rest of the team was able to hold it down, that makes the rest of the season promising.”
We finally got to the arena, which we both agreed looked like the ARTIC train and bus station in Anaheim. Music was blasting. People shot baskets at two courts near the entrance. A dance crew dressed in gray jogging suits did their thing. Nelson stared at it all and just grinned.
“Look at how clean everything is,” he said, referring to the design scheme. “That’s one of the reasons I never really wanted to go to a game, either. I once went to a concert at Staples Center. It was ugly.”
Nelson made his way to a spot where we could look down at the Clippers practice facility, where a solitary player was practicing. “Amir Coffey!” Nelson exclaimed. “He’s a hustler.”
Our seats, which were a Christmas surprise from Cynthia to her husband, were the nosebleeds of the nosebleeds.
“That’s where the real fans are, anyways,” he said with a laugh. Nelson then pointed to a section of seats behind one end of the court far below us.
A Clippers fan holds up an “L.A. Strong” shirt during the first half of the Clippers’ 109-98 win Monday at the Intuit Dome. It was the Clippers’ first home game since the start of devastating wildfires in Los Angeles.
(Jessie Alcheh / Associated Press)
“That’s called ‘the Wall.’ You have to go through this process and you really have to be a Clippers fan to sit there. They ask you things like who’s your favorite player, how many years have you rooted for them — it’s like a quiz. [Clippers owner] Steve Ballmer wanted a space for the real ones.”
Cynthia tried to buy tickets for the Wall but didn’t pass muster in time.
Nelson nursed a margarita and held on to a Clippers sweatshirt I bought him; I downed my double Jack Daniels. It was Korean Heritage Day, so the arena played Psy, BTS and Blackpink while flashing all sorts of lights.
It was game time.
The Clippers came onto the court wearing black-and-white T-shirts that read “LA Strong.” It was their first home game since the devastating Pacific Palisades and Eaton fire that brought ruin to tens of thousands of Southern Californians. Public address announcer Eric Smith mentioned the disasters and their “unfathomable devastation” in a short speech, but the few fans who showed up — attendance was announced at a generous 13,119 — wanted to focus on something else for a few hours, at least.
Nelson booed the Heat as they were introduced, and applauded when it was the turn of his squad. Leonard was nowhere to be seen. “He doesn’t seem to be playing today,” Nelson said with disappointment.
Then Leonard ran onto the court.
“He’s playing!” Nelson shouted.
That would be as joyful as he’d be for the first half.
Leonard looked rusty. The Heat were raining down three-pointers. Nelson groaned when the Clippers turned over the ball and shook his head when they missed easy shots. Mostly, he stayed quiet. He was enraptured. He never checked his phone once.
At halftime, with the Clippers down 48-43, I asked how he liked watching a game in person.
“It’s really nice,” he replied. “Live, you really get into the flow of things. And it’s such an amazing view.”
I was happy he was happy, but was afraid my compa’s first game would be a blowout loss. Then the Clippers came alive.
Center Ivica Zubac kept grabbing rebounds and muscling his way toward dunks to fans growling “Zuuuuub.” James Harden scored 13 points in the third quarter as the Clippers clawed back from a 17-point deficit. Nelson began to clap louder. His head bobbed with the music. When small forward Norman Powell did a shake-and-bake before hitting a three to give the Clippers a lead they never relinquished, Nelson yelled “Ohhhh!”
Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard controls the ball in front of Miami Heat guard Jaime Jaquez Jr. during the first half of the Clippers’ 109-98 win Monday at the Intuit Dome.
(Jessie Alcheh / Associated Press)
We cheered and booed throughout the fourth quarter, and even mooed as part of a Chik-fil-A promotion that promises free chicken sandwiches to all attendees if an opposing player misses back-to-back free throws in the fourth quarter. When the game ended with the Clippers on top, 109-98, Nelson sat back for a bit and basked in the moment.
“Beautiful,” he finally proclaimed. He put on his sweatshirt so I could take a photo with the Clippers court behind him, then we left Intuit.
“That was really good,” Nelson said as we walked through the chilly Inglewood night. “All I can think of right now is, ‘When am I gonna come back?’”
He explained how tonight was a typical Clippers victory this season: “They’ll be up, then they start to get behind, then they hustle back to win but give their fans freaking anxiety. But Kawhi is going to get better. The Clippers are going to get better. It’s going to be good this year.”
We drove back to Orange County, and agreed to attend another game this season. The following day, I hung out with Cynthia and she told me how ecstatic Nelson was.
“He even wore his sweatshirt to work,” she said with knowing eyes. “And I said, ‘Is that appropriate?’ And he said, ‘Of course it is!’”
We’ve got the Wall next time, Compa Nelson. Zuuuuub.
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The face of baseball will not be at Tuesday’s All-Star Game.
Shohei Ohtani was scratched from his start on Friday as the Los Angeles Dodgers said he will also miss the Midsummer Classic with what the team called left knee irritation.
Ohtani, for obvious reasons, has become an All-Star Game fixture. He has earned the honor in each of the past five seasons and made his first start in 2021.
Starting pitcher Shohei Ohtani #17 of the Los Angeles Dodgers warms up before the MLB game against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field on June 03, 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images) (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
The two-way phenom is on his way to winning his fifth MVP award in his last six seasons as he is hitting .290 with a .939 OPS and pitching to a minuscule 1.79 ERA, the second-lowest in the sport among pitchers with 80-plus innings. His OPS is also the seventh-best mark in the league.
The Dodgers said Ohtani will be the team’s designated hitter up until the break, but he will “have some interventions on his knee to put him in the best position for the second half of the season.”
Ohtani dealt with knee issues earlier in the season.
It is certainly a big hit for the game as the other face of the sport, Aaron Judge, will miss the game due to a fractured rib that has kept him out since late May.
Shohei Ohtani #17 of the Los Angeles Dodgers gets ready in the on deck circle against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field on June 01, 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Norm Hall/Getty Images) (Norm Hall/Getty Images)
DODGERS WILL AGAIN VISIT WHITE HOUSE TO CELEBRATE WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONSHIP, OFFICIAL SAYS
Ohtani hit 99 home runs combined in 2024 and 2025, leading the National League with a 1.025 OPS in that span. Ohtani did not pitch in 2024 after elbow surgery but returned to the bump last year and owned a 2.87 ERA and 11.9 K/9, a figure he also put up in 2022 that led the American League.
The “Japanese Babe Ruth” is the only player in MLB history to have 300-plus plate appearances and 40-plus innings in six separate seasons (Ruth only did it twice and never stole 50 bases), and he has more than excelled at both.
Shohei Ohtani pitches for the Los Angeles Dodgers against the San Francisco Giants at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, California, on May 13, 2026. (Gary A. Vasquez/Imagn Images)
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Ohtani is not hitting like he has in the past, but certainly the best pitching performance of his career will make up for it. He “only” has 20 homers and 56 RBI this season.
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If Mikel Merino is sleeping, please don’t wake him. If the last week has been a dream, he’d just as soon keep dreaming.
Because on Friday, for the second time in five days, Merino came off the bench for the final five minutes of a World Cup knockout game and scored the winning goal, the latest lifting Spain to a 2-1 victory over Belgium and into next week’s semifinal against France in Arlington, Texas.
“Not even in my wildest dreams could I have imagined what’s happening right now, right?” Merino said in Spanish. “Honestly, it’s crazy.”
How crazy? Merino has played less than 10 minutes in the last two games and has two goals. He’s taken four shots in the World Cup and put two of them in the back of the net, the first in stoppage time to beat Portugal in the Round of 16 and in the 88th minute Friday to beat Belgium in a quarterfinal and extend Spain’s unbeaten to streak to 36 games.
“I don’t really even know what to say. I still can’t quite believe it,” Merino said.
Yet Spain’s final substitution, which brought on Merino in the 86th minute, wasn’t the only one that figured heavily in the result. Fifteen minutes earlier Belgian coach Rudi Garcia sent backup goalkeeper Senne Lammens on for Thibaut Courtois — not by choice, by necessity.
The dropoff in talent wasn’t great — Lammens started 32 times for Manchester United this season — but the difference in experience was. Courtois was playing in his 21st World Cup game, second-most all-time, and he had been brilliant up to then.
But he tweaked a muscle making a save minutes earlier and dropped to the turf just before the second-half hydration break. After being attended to by the team’s trainers, he tried to continue but couldn’t, eventually hobbling to the sideline and collapsing on the bench in tears.
“We didn’t want his injury to get worse. That’s why I subbed him off,” Garcia said.
“It’s part and parcel of high-level sport. You need to be concentrated, 100% focused, and need to be able to perform. I did not want to put players on the pitch who were not 100%.”
The margin between Belgium and Spain, after all, is a small one, even if the teams took completely different routes to the quarterfinal.
Spain, which hadn’t gone past the Round of 16 in a World Cup since 2010 when it won its only title, had gone a record six games and 609 minutes without allowing a World Cup goal, dating to the group stage of the last tournament four years ago.
Spain midfielder Mikel Merino scores off a rebound in front of Belgium goalkeeper Senne Lammens during the second half of Spain’s 2-1 quarterfinal win in the World Cup quarterfinals Friday at SoFi Stadium.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
You could binge watch two seasons of “Abbott Elementary” in that time.
But if Spain, the reigning European champion, and goalkeeper Unai Simón were the immovable objects, Belgium, playing in the quarterfinals for the third time in four World Cups, was an unstoppable force. With 12 goals in the last three games, it entered the quarterfinals with the third-most goals in the tournament. And no team had taken more shots.
Spain struck first, with Fabián Ruiz giving La Roja a 1-0 lead with his first goal of the tournament in the 30th minute. The sequence started with Pedro Porro sending a cross into the box for Dani Olmo, whose shot was parried away by Courtois. But Ruiz pounced on the rebound and deflected a shot off defender Timothy Castagne and into the back of the net.
In any other game of this tournament, that would have been enough for Simón. But not against Belgium, which ended Spain’s shutout streak in the 41st minute on a brilliant header from Charles De Keterlaere, who shielded Pau Cubarsí with his body and one-hopped a Castagne cross past a flat-footed Simón for his third goal in two games.
“The record and the milestones are there,” Spanish coach Luis de la Fuente said of his goalkeeper’s record streak. “It’s been decades since the last record was set. And perhaps somebody will break the clean-sheet record.
“But it’s going to be many, many years before that happens.”
Belgium opened the game up a bit when Garcia brought Romelu Lukaku, the country’s all-time leading scorer, on at the hour mark. But Courtois was called to make two saves in the next three minutes and came up lame after the second.
Shorty after he came off, De la Fuente summoned Merino over.
“He didn’t say much to me,” Merino said. “He told me I was coming in as the No. 10. And then, as the game was coming to an end, he told me I was incredible.
“Those are the only two things he said to me.”
The first shot Lammens faced came moments later, when Cubarsí put a one-hop shot on goal from distance. The keeper dove to his right to stop it with both hands, but the ball skipped just before it reached he and Lammens had trouble with the rebound, pushing it toward the edge of the six-yard box for Merino, who tapped it in.
“Unfortunately, to beat a team of this caliber, you need luck on your side,” Garcia, the Belgian coach, said. And the stars didn’t align for us.”
So while Belgium goes home, Spain goes to Texas for Tuesday’s semifinal with France, the only team in the world ranked ahead of it.
“Ever since the World Cup started, everyone has been waiting for this match,” Spanish wunderkind Lamine Yamal said. “I’ve been really looking forward to it. To me, they’re the two best teams in the World Cup.
“If anyone can take on France with confidence, it’s us.”
Especially if Merino keeps dreaming.
Sports editor Iliana Limón Romero contributed to this story.
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Oba Femi and Brock Lesnar’s feud will come to a head at SummerSlam in August, and the showdown has the potential to be WWE’s match of the year.
Femi beat Lesnar at WrestleMania 42 and led to “The Beast Incarnate” deciding to retire – at least for a moment – at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Lesnar made a dramatic return a few weeks later, challenging and beating Femi at Clash in Italy.
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Oba Femi looks on during Monday Night RAW at Allstate Arena on July 6, 2026, in Chicago, Illinois. (Melina Pizano/WWE via Getty Images)
At SummerSlam, Femi and Lesnar will do battle inside a Hell in a Cell.
WWE Hall of Famer John Bradshaw Layfield called the next meeting between Femi and Lesnar a “generational matchup.”
“I’ve never seen anything like Oba – well, I have. I’ve seen Brock,” he told Fox News Digital. “It’s very much the carbon copy of Brock coming in. Brock coming in was like, oh my God, who is this guy? The guy can even talk, and he’s gonna be one of the biggest stars in wrestling. Not only could he talk, he’s a really smart guy. Brock became one of the biggest draws in professional wrestling. He came one of the biggest draws in UFC. It’s an unbelievable story, and now you got somebody who can rival that character.
Brock Lesnar in action against Oba Femi during “Monday Night Raw” at TD Garden on March 23, 2026, in Boston, Massachusetts. (Michael Owens/WWE via Getty Images)
“This Oba Femi comes out with the silly little walk he does. Everyone kinda does it, it’s like The Bushwackers. But the whole arena does it. I was in Vegas and I didn’t want to go to the matches and deal with the traffic and deal with the backstage area, and so I kinda just watched it in a sports bar. I stood in the back where nobody could recognize me, and as soon as Oba came out, the entire sports bar was sitting there doing that Oba Femi dance. The guy is just unbelievably over.
“I really think that somewhere in the NFL this year, you’re going to see an entire NFL arena doing this dance. You’re gonna have somebody like Saquon Barkley or ‘King’ (Derrick Henry) or some of these guys do this dance, and it’s infectious. Once one of them does, one of these great running backs or wide receivers, or somebody scores a touchdown, that’s when I think you’re gonna see entire arenas doing it. I just think Oba Femi is lightning in a bottle and Brock has always been that way. This is, to me, a generational matchup.”
Brock Lesnar and Oba Femi face off during WrestleMania 42: Night 2 at Allegiant Stadium on April 19, 2026, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Georgiana Dallas/WWE via Getty Images)
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SummerSlam will take place on Aug. 1 and 2 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
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