The transformation of Inglewood is more than an LA Clippers story

INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Inglewood mayor James T. Butts had reason to stand tall and speak proudly from the ninth floor of City Hall, knowing that “The City of Champions” nickname once again had meaning.

Then-Inglewood mayor Edward Vincent nicknamed the town after the Los Angeles Lakers won the 1972 NBA championship. The Lakers, Los Angeles Kings, Los Angeles Sparks and the Hollywood Park Racetrack kept that nickname intact until the racetrack closed and the three franchises were relocated to downtown Los Angeles. But in a resurgence, Inglewood has gone from forgotten to a sports mecca once again.

SoFi Stadium in Inglewood is the home stadium of the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers and will host the FIFA World Cup in 2026, Super Bowl LXI in 2027 and the 2028 Los Angeles Games. The LA Clippers play their first regular-season game at the new Intuit Dome on Wednesday against the Phoenix Suns (10 p.m. ET, ESPN).

“Our brand in Inglewood is definitely improved,” Butts told Andscape on Sept. 23. “When I came back to Inglewood in 2011, if you ask somebody from Inglewood where they live, they said, ‘I live just south of Culver City. I live right next to Westchester. I live about a mile from the airport.’ They didn’t say Inglewood. Now when you ask somebody from Inglewood where they live, they say, ‘I live in Inglewood, California.’ ”

The $2 billion, 18,000-seat Intuit Dome is the brainchild of Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, who also fully financed the arena. The egg-shaped arena is near the Forum and SoFi Stadium and a short drive from Los Angeles International Airport. Usher and Bruno Mars have already performed at the venue.

“Intuit Dome is special,” Ballmer told Andscape. “I feel like I had a clear view of what we wanted to do and I love what we built. This was an investment made in order for people to come to Inglewood to enjoy a few hours of entertainment, whether it is for a concert or a Clippers game. We want this arena to be a place where people can come together.

“Someone once told me, you never really own an NBA team. You take care of it. You shepherd it. I hope this arena is a way I can be a steward of this team, because Intuit Dome was built for our fans and I hope they love it.”

Clippers president of basketball operations Gillian Zucker spearheaded the development of the Intuit Dome. She told Andscape that over 100 venues all over the world, from sporting arenas and stadiums to concert halls and zoos, were scouted to come up with the state-of-the-art arena. Zucker said the idea of the hanging 38,375-foot Halo Board came from Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. The idea of automatic gates with no ticket takers came from a Philippines zoo. The idea for a cashless venue by use of an app for payment for tickets, food and merchandise came from the French Open.

“I just can’t wait to see the building alive with all those people in there, watch as Steve’s vision comes to life and see how people interact with it,” Zucker told Andscape during the Clippers’ recent training camp in Honolulu. “It’s going to surprise a lot of people. And as I’ve been seeing little pieces of it quietly behind the scenes as we’re practicing, it’s really fun and I think it’s going to create different kinds of interactivity for fans with the game.”

The Clippers are also now in the first venue of their own since they moved from the now-defunct Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena to the Staples Center, now Crypto.com Arena, in 1999.

With the 17-time NBA champion Lakers being the lead tenant and the Kings being second, the Clippers were third fiddle in the Staples Center/Crypto.com Arena for 25 years downtown. The Clippers often had to play on the least-desirable dates and at odd matinee times on weekends. There was no true identity for the Clippers. All of the statues outside were related to the popular Lakers and Kings and the Clippers had no title banners, to boot.

Now, the Clippers are the only sports tenant in the basketball-inspired Intuit Dome eight miles from their old home. Game times are under their control and seats are closer to the floor than in most NBA venues. The Clippers also have a cutting-edge practice facility at the Intuit Dome.

“We have the place you can call home,” Clippers coach Tyronn Lue told Andscape from training camp. “You don’t have to pick your shoes up in your bags and take it home every time you leave the arena, because that’s our place. And so that means a lot. Mr. Ballmer, the job he’s done along with Gillian, it’s been unbelievable.”

Another intriguing feature of Clippers game experience will be “The Wall,” which includes more than 300 passionate fans in 51 rows. The most well-known Clippers superfan will be Darrell “Clipper Darrell” Bailey wearing his split red and white suit and Clippers ball cap. Only vetted Clippers enthusiasts are allowed to sit in The Wall; others will be escorted out.

“It will be loud, I imagine,” Clipper Darrell told Andscape. “It will be an experience to build our fan base.”

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Before the arrival of the Clippers, Inglewood, a primarily African American and Hispanic city of about 110,000 people, dealt with its share of racial issues.

Inglewood was officially incorporated as a city in 1908 and had a long history of racial nightmares. The Ku Klux Klan had a headquarters in Inglewood in the 1920s and early 1930s. According to the Los Angeles Times, more than 100 KKK members attacked a Spanish family in Inglewood in 1922 and forced two teenage girls to undress while viciously beating their father and uncle. There also were “Caucasian only” signs throughout the city.

Due to redlining and other forms of racial discrimination, Inglewood remained a predominantly white city in the 1940s and 1950s despite a migration of Black people to Los Angeles from the South. According to the Los Angeles Times, most Black people were moving to South Central while towns like Inglewood didn’t allow the sale of homes to non-white people. The newspaper also reported that there were “only 29 negroes among Inglewood’s 63,390 residents” in 1960.

Butts, 71, recalled coming to Inglewood in the 1950s as a kid in hopes to go swimming at a park for 5 cents. But when he or any other African Americans attempted to enter, he said, they were racially profiled and charged an unaffordable 25 cents as a non-resident.

“I’d go up there with my nickel and I put it on the desk and the person behind the counter and say, ‘No, it’s a quarter for you,’ ” Butts said. “I’d say, ‘How do you know I don’t live here?’ They said, ‘You don’t live here.’ And that’s the way it was. We had [white] policemen tell us, ‘Why don’t you go play in the park in Los Angeles?’ ”

Restrictions on housing discrimination based on race changed after the Watts riots occurred in 1965 and the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 was passed. White people moved out of Inglewood in droves in the 1960s and 1970s.
By 1980, the population in Inglewood was 56.4% Black and 20.9% white. From 1980 to 1990, the Black population of Inglewood dropped to 50.6% and the Hispanic population jumped from 19.2% to 37.9%.

Former UCLA guard Ralph Jackson, now a financial adviser, was raised by his grandmother in Inglewood.

“We moved from South Central in 1971 in the southern part of Inglewood, Crenshaw and Imperial area,” Jackson, 61, said. “When we first moved there it was all white. We were the second Black family to move in. And in two years, it was white flight. All my initial white friends moved to North Hollywood, Torrance, Sherman Oaks.”

Former Lakers guard Byron Scott and his family moved from South Central to Inglewood in the 1960s. Scott recalled his family moving to Inglewood for a better life.

“We lived in South Central [Los Angeles] for a while and there was gangs and other stuff going on,” Scott, 62, said. “I witnessed two murders before I was 11 years old. And my mom and dad were like, ‘We got to get the hell out of here.’ So, when my dad moved us to Inglewood, that was like Beverly Hills for us. Me and my brother shared a room. My two sisters shared a room in the three-bedroom home right on the corner of 104th and Sixth Avenue. We came from being straight in South Central LA, where everything was killing and shooting at night and helicopters and sirens to a point where now we in a neighborhood where it’s a little bit more stable and we didn’t have the gang violence that we had in South Central.”

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Inglewood’s second sports and entertainment venue opened in 1967 and was called the Forum. Business executive Jack Kent Cooke was motivated to build the Forum after his expansion los Angeles Kings team was denied the ability to play in the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena due to a previous agreement with the minor league hockey franchise. Cooke once told the Los Angeles Times that a member of the Los Angeles Sports Commission was “laughing at him” when he announced that he was building a $16 million arena in Inglewood.

Cooke got the last laugh as the Kings debuted at the Forum on Dec. 30, 1967. The Lakers played their first game there the next day. Both franchises played in the Forum from 1967 to 1999.

Scott said he rarely saw any Lakers players as a kid in Inglewood, but he and his friends figured out a way to sneak into some NBA games with his friends as a teen.

“I didn’t have no money or a ticket,” Scott said. “So, it was like, ‘We have got way to get in here. And going down that [Forum] tunnel with that little guard down that was about 80 years old, I was like, ‘We just run past him. We get in, we just find a seat.’ So that’s what we did on certain occasions to go see games.”

“The Fabulous Forum,” as it was nicknamed by famous Lakers play-by-play announcer Chick Hearn, was most notably known as the home of the Lakers. The Lakers won seven NBA titles there from 1972 to 1988. Coincidentally, Scott came home to play with Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and The Showtime Lakers in 1980, and was a member of the Lakers during their last three titles in the Forum. Scott also played his last NBA season in the Forum with the Lakers during the 1996-97 season with future Hall of Famers Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal.

It was very special for Scott to play at home in the Forum.

“That was my team. So, I wanted to be a Laker since I can remember,” Scott said. “But to start my career there and end my career there, if I wrote a movie or a book, people wouldn’t believe it. They couldn’t believe all this happened to a kid from Inglewood.”

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The Lakers, Kings and Clippers moved into the new Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles during the 1999-2000 season. In 2000, the Forum was purchased by the Faithful Central Bible Church and was used for church services, concerts and others special events. The Sparks also played at the Forum from 1997 to 2001.

Lue was a rookie point guard for the Lakers during their final season at the Forum (1998-99).

“What I remember most about the Forum is the history. Magic [Johnson], Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar], [James] Worthy, Byron Scott, [Michael] Cooper. Those guys played in that same arena and then I get drafted and get to play in the same arena in Inglewood. That was like a dream come true.

“It was tough. There was so much history. So many championships. Then you got to move to new arena. It was not only bad for the fans, but bad for the Inglewood community.”

There was lost revenue and tax dollars when the Lakers, Kings and Sparks left Inglewood. The city had a $17.6 million deficit in 2011, Butts said. The Hollywood Park Racetrack, which averaged 43,000 fans per day six days per week according to Butts, closed in 2013 after 75 years. With numerous jobs lost, Butts added, Inglewood was losing about $1 million per year in tax dollars from a closed Forum and $3 million from the shuttered racetrack.

“We had an extremely high crime rate,” Butts said. “People would come for the sports events and they would leave. And so that didn’t translate into sales, taxes and prosperity for our small businesses.”

The former Inglewood police sergeant immediately set to make bold change when he became mayor again in 2011.

“When I came back, we had Sizzler, Randy’s Donuts and that structural deficit,” Butts said. “We had to cut 139 positions. Sixty-nine of them had people in them. We had to put everybody on a 10% furlough. They had to take an extra day off every two weeks without pay. We had to get rid of a lifetime medical program that was promised, but unsustainable.

“The appreciation I got for making the tough moves that kept us alive was that Christmas of 2011, the unions picketed my home and they passed out flyers along the cars where I was living with a picture of me. And it had a top hat on me like I was Scrooge. And it said, ‘Mayor Butts don’t be such a scrooge.’ And the only saving grace was it was a damn good picture of me.”

The return of Inglewood as an entertainment mecca began in 2014 after Butts spearheaded the selling of the Forum to Madison Square Garden in 2014. It was reopened after a $100 million renovation. Ballmer purchased what is now the Kia Forum from MSG in 2020 for $400 million.

“It meant a lot when we reopened the Forum,” Butts said.

Without the NFL for decades, Los Angeles remained a prime target as the No. 2 media market in America and a film and entertainment giant. While Carson, California, and downtown Los Angeles offered opportunity, Stan Kroenke and Kroenke Sports & Entertainment negotiated with Inglewood to buy the land at the old Hollywood Park Racetrack site in 2018. Kroenke moved his Rams from St. Louis in 2016, beating the Oakland Raiders to securing a site in Los Angeles and invited the San Diego Chargers to join them.

“I got a quick education of what it takes to get a football team to migrate,” Butts said. “You have to have an owner that wants to be here. They have to have the financing, and they have to get 75% of the league to vote to allow them to move. Stan Kroenke was able, we believed, to accomplish all three.”

Butts said he also spent a year convincing the NFL that Inglewood was the right location. Rams president Kevin Demoff said Kroenke believed they had “dumb luck” to buy 300 acres in central Los Angeles and close to Los Angeles International Airport near lots of hotels and the major surrounding freeways. Demoff said Kroenke also believed in Butts’ vision and strongly believed that Inglewood was a perfect location despite its challenges.

“Stan always believed if you were going to go to Los Angeles, you had to do it right,” Demoff told Andscape. “And his motto was always, you can’t undershoot Los Angeles. And this wasn’t just about a stadium, it was really about creating a sports and entertainment district that would fulfill the NFL dreams that had eluded the league for 30 years and become an iconic place in Los Angeles in a city full of Hollywood and entertainment.”

Inglewood officially returned as one of the major sports centers in the world with the addition of SoFi Stadium in 2020. It hosted the Super Bowl in 2022 and the College Football Playoff National Championship in 2023. A record 161,892 fans attended WrestleMania over two days in 2022. It will be one of the sites for eight matches during the FIFA World Cup in 2026, including the USA men’s national soccer team’s opening game. SoFi Stadium will also host the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

Meanwhile, Intuit Dome will host the men’s and women’s basketball during the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics while Crypto.com Arena will host artistic, rhythmic and trampoline gymnastic events. Zucker said hosting basketball at Intuit Dome during the Olympics was extremely important to Ballmer.

“When we decided that we needed to have our own home, we looked into a number of locations. And I don’t believe Intuit Dome could have been built in any place, in Southern California, other than Inglewood.”

— LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer

“ ‘We’re so excited about the Olympics, any sport at all, so long as it’s basketball,’ ” Zucker told the LA28 committee.

Ballmer, estimated to be worth $125 billion, could have moved the Clippers to Seattle, Las Vegas or several other cities seeking an NBA team. But in Inglewood, the Clippers stayed in Los Angeles, joined a growing entertainment mecca and created their identity. The former Microsoft CEO is very happy with his decision.

“When we decided that we needed to have our own home, we looked into a number of locations. And I don’t believe Intuit Dome could have been built in any place, in Southern California, other than Inglewood,” Ballmer said.

With Intuit Dome, SoFi Stadium, Kia Forum, Cinépolis Luxury Cinemas Inglewood IMAX, the 6,000-seat YouTube Theater and the NFL’s West Coast headquarters all located within minutes from each other, Inglewood has become a hip entertainment destination.

So, was all of this beneficial or detrimental to the locals?

Well, it depends on who you ask.

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As major venues were coming to Inglewood, Butts begged residents not to sell their properties while values were increasing. According to the Los Angeles Times, crime in Inglewood has decreased to record lows under Butts since 2011. His progressive measures lowered Inglewood’s debt, retained wealth for its residents and dropped the unemployment to 4.7%, according to the city. Moreover, Butts said property values have increased more than 200% since 2012.

Inglewood’s rise led to the additions of new condos and interest in new residents. Rent prices and evictions, however, rose dramatically.

“Here is the frustrating thing about being ‘The resurgent City of Champions,’ ” Butts said. “We went from a time where we were going to bankrupt, and we were going to lose half of our employees to now we’re now running the city so well that we have more elevated reserves than any city in the South Bay. More than Beverly Hills and Santa Monica. But still in all with our property values tripling, we still have people in protest saying, ‘That’s too bad because you’re going to hurt yourself because with Black and brown communities, it’s bad to have something good economically because all of you are going to have to leave.’ And nothing can be further from the truth …

“People aren’t aware of their own predisposition to look logically at what is happening here. It is looked at through a racial lens as though it’s a bad thing that people from other races want to come back and buy in Inglewood.”

While acknowledging the concerns, Demoff believes the addition of SoFi Stadium, Intuit Dome and other entertainment venues has made Inglewood better. Demoff said it wants Kroenke Sports & Entertainment to be a solid neighbor and it has invested in Inglewood schools, local parks and sports venues.

“You never want to displace citizens,” Demoff said. “You want them to feel proud of the neighborhood they live in. And there’s been a collective effort to move forward with that. But when we were building Hollywood Park, nobody thought of Inglewood as a destination. And when we went through and envisioned what it could be, that has certainly changed. And you see the progression with the Clippers and their agreements around affordable housing and some of those elements that recognize the changes in Inglewood.”

Isis Roberts saw one way to reverse gentrification in Inglewood: Be an African American woman who moved to Inglewood.

Roberts moved to Inglewood in 2021 and has been excited about the growth of the city since moving in. While it wasn’t easy to buy in Inglewood due to the competition, the Las Vegas native eventually figured it out. She said she has enjoyed seeing the growth of Inglewood not just from entertainment and sports venues, but also seeing Black-owned coffee cafes and the 1010 Wine and Events wine bar. She said that her home rose in value an estimated $50,000 in a year, but now Redfin estimates it to only be $5,000 higher in value due to high interest rates.

“I knew the area had great potential, but also had a sense of history that was worth preserving,” Roberts said. “I rented in View Park, a historically Black neighborhood, for five years. So, I wanted to be close to that community feel. I moved to Inglewood in 2021 at a time where I’d walk into open houses and see people who didn’t look like me come in and buy in cash, so it was very hard to compete. I almost quit.

“But thankfully, I went to view this condo and the listing agent was a Black woman. And she really respected my grind. And honestly, I feel like she just wanted to give me a chance. So, she told me the sellers needed to sell ASAP and if I can offer a little bit more than the current offer, she’d go with me.” 

Camesha Gosha said her family bought a home in Inglewood in 2005 and she loved living around affluent African Americans like herself. The freelance writer said it was tough for her and her husband to find quality entertainment for their son and daughter in Inglewood as they were growing up. They rented their Inglewood home after moving to Orange County in 2015 and sold it after moving to the San Francisco Bay Area this year.

“Today’s Inglewood is a far cry from the city we moved into almost 20 years ago. Every time we’re back, we see something new that’s been added. There are new fitness centers, movie theaters, and shops that didn’t exist before. The demographics have changed a bit as well,” Gosha said.

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Despite the challenges on a once-thriving Market Street, local favorite Woody’s Bar-B-Que has been successfully selling ribs, chicken, brisket and all the trimmings for 30 years. Owner Rodney Phillips said customers include former Lakers stars such as Johnson and Shaquille O’Neal, but businesses on Market Street are either now struggling, shuttered or sold. He said he turned down a $2.6 million offer from a company trying to buy up the block to the chagrin of his business neighbors who agreed to sell.

“Of course, with the stadium and high prices, everything started rising,” Phillips said. “A lot of people who were just here hanging on, once everything started taking off, they were left out in the cold and had to get out of here. I’ve seen a lot of businesses leave.

“There were a lot of mom-and-pop businesses, but the money got big and the landlords were being offered millions of dollars for their properties. So, they sold and that put you out if you don’t own the property.”

Phillips said the Rams and the Clippers have supported his business in the past, but not enough to offer an opportunity to sell his barbecue in Intuit Dome or SoFi Stadium. Intuit Dome has partnered with Levy Restaurants to sell what they call affordable food as well as high-end sushi from a Nobu restaurant chef through their arena app. Phillips said he wishes local businesses were offered the opportunity to sell their food inside the Intuit Dome.

“I’m not sure if I would be able to do it, but I would like to be offered and find out if I could,” Phillips said.

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While Woody’s Bar-B-Que won’t get into Intuit Dome anytime soon, it’s possible it can be a popup through “Neighborhood Eats.” Located in the courtyard area outside Intuit Dome, Zucker said, there will be a rotation of local restaurants that will get a chance to use its pop-up space. The first in the rotation was Sunday Gravy, an Italian restaurant in Inglewood, that also fed 100 guests during Clippers media day.

“It’s actually a sister and brother that just have an incredible restaurant that they’ve created,” Zucker said. “And we’ve brought it to the Intuit Dome so that people can get the experience of it and hopefully we can highlight the amazing work they’re doing. So, we’ll be doing more of that as we’re bringing in more of the local community to utilize the platform we have.”

One nearby venue hoping to take advantage of event nights at Intuit Dome is 1010 Wine and Events in Inglewood. The wine bar and restaurant opened in 2021 and is owned and operated by sisters Leslie Jones and Le Jones. The Inglewood natives were inspired to open the first Black-owned wine bar here that only serves vino from Black-owned winemakers.

Leslie Jones said organic local marketing and events have been key to their success.

“The reason we planted our business here was because we were tired of going out of our city to enjoy good food, to enjoy good wine. So, this is literally home for me,” she said. “A lot of people said we were nuts. They said that Black and brown people don’t drink wine, [that] it’s a weird place to put a wine bar. But we knew it wasn’t true because a lot of our friends enjoyed wine.”

On Sept. 24, Leslie Jones held an event at 1010 promoting her candidacy for City Council in District 4 in Inglewood. SoFi Stadium and Intuit Dome are located in District 4. She said she wants to bring more safety measures to Inglewood, especially on event nights.

“The reason why I am running is because when SoFi Stadium and Intuit Dome came, a lot of the residents of the city felt like they didn’t know what was going on and were left out,” Leslie Jones said. “There is a happy medium between these big stadiums being in place and really engaging with the residents and making them feel a part of the change that is happening.”

Le Jones owns Champ City Bar & Lounge, the only sports bar within walking distance to Intuit Dome. She said she opened the sports bar in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic, had early success and believed that the arrival of the Intuit Dome would help her business skyrocket. On the contrary, Le Jones said, the bar does the worst on event nights.

She says representatives from Ballmer offered to buy her property years ago, but she declined to her extreme regret now. On this night an hour before singer Usher is to perform at Intuit Dome, there were only two patrons.

“The night that Bruno Mars came, I went from making thousands of dollars a night to take $300 a night,” Le Jones said. “My regulars can’t get to me. There is traffic congestion. So, the people that are used to coming to Champ City don’t want to deal with it. The people that come to the events don’t know who we are. And it costs $70 to park. So, if you’re in your local area, are you going to pay $70 to go to a sports bar? You’re not. There was no plan in place for local businesses on Prairie [Street] at all …

“We are thinking right now about if we’re going to sell or see what happens. But it killed my business, 100%. I did better during the pandemic than I have the last eight months.”

Upon hearing Le Jones’ experiences, Zucker said: “Please tell her to give me a call.”

The Inglewood Unified School District, citing declines in enrollment, announced plans this year to close five public schools after the 2024-25 school year. It includes three elementary schools, one junior high and Morningside High School where Scott starred and former WNBA star Lisa Leslie once scored 101 points in the first half of a game.

While there have been protests over the closures, more than $200 million is being put into the reconstruction of Inglewood High School, where NBA stars Paul Pierce and Reggie Theus attended.

Veteran NBA referee Derek Richardson purchased and renamed K. Anthony’s Elementary School in Inglewood after his mother, Dolores T. Richardson, in 2022 after the previous owners planned to close it. He is the co-founder and executive director of the Why Can’t We Make A Difference Foundation, whose mission is to stimulate academics and enthusiasm in schools in underserved communities. Most of the students in the private school, which has 15 employees, are Hispanic.

Richardson hopes to have free breakfast and lunch for the students soon just as he received in the New York neighborhood of Harlem from the Black Panther Party as a child.

“We have balance with our students, male and female,” Richardson said over wine at 1010. “When somebody comes in, they’re safe. You have individuals who understand the culture, that is very important. They’re bringing in a dynamic academic staff. I put my staff against anybody.”

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So, are Clippers doing their part to give back locally as well? Financially, yes.

In 2019, Ballmer told ESPN he agreed to $100 million in community benefits earmarked for affordable housing, school and youth programs and Inglewood’s main library as part of their arena development agreement. Citing public records, the Clippers described the investment as the largest commitment of funding for community programs to a sports or entertainment venue in California.

“Inglewood offered us an opportunity to be a part of the economic development of the city and with the leadership of Mayor Butts, we have committed over $100 million to a community benefits package that will impact housing, youth and family programs, senior citizen services and employment. The mayor recently shared with me that since Intuit Dome broke ground,” Ballmer said.

“What Mr. Ballmer did, putting up $100 million dollars for the community, that was huge,” Lue said.

Former Lakers guard Michael Cooper, whose No. 21 jersey will be retired by the Lakers this season, has hopes for the Clippers.

“Inglewood is the City of Champions,” Cooper said. “We started that. And I actually like that they’re moving there, because the Clippers have a great product. It’s just a shame that they haven’t been able to really exploit it the way they should. A little hindrance has been being up under the Lakers. Now with them going there, they got the Intuit Dome. Ballmer has done a great job of getting the media out there on things. Hopefully they will do big things and, hopefully, that will be a jump start.”

While Scott gives the Clippers his blessing for playing in Inglewood, he still believes the Lakers will always reign supreme in Los Angeles.

“I’m an Inglewood guy. So, I want Inglewood to thrive and do well,” Scott said. “And Ballmer is a great owner. He brings a lot of brightness to the city and the NBA. He’s one of the better owners that we have. So, for them to move Inglewood and with what he’s doing for the city of Inglewood, I have no ill will towards them being in Inglewood.”