Benjamin Hits Back

The response came as strong as the original attack, Benoit Benjamin saying Monday night that he deserves better than Clipper officials questioning his maturity and conditioning.

“If that’s their opinion, so be it,” Benjamin said in his first comments on his contract holdout. “But everybody knows, in L.A. and around the NBA, that they can’t win without me. Maybe they’d be competitive, but not as good as they could be. . . . Alan (Rothenberg, the general counsel) knows they can’t win how they want to win without me.”

The Clippers decided to offer Benjamin nothing more than a two-year contract after reports that he was overweight and concerned that his not hiring a new agent to replace the deceased Larry Fleisher until a week before camp began smacked of continued immaturity.

Benjamin said he weighs about 275 pounds, 25 above his playing weight last season, but that the majority of the added bulk is muscle.

“Tell ‘em I weigh 500 pounds,” he said, laughing.

And what would their reaction be to that?

“I don’t know,” Benjamin said, “and I really don’t care.”