For Openers, This Rivalry Is One Game : Pro basketball: Lakers still getting over the shock of losing Johnson, and Clippers trying to see what they have.

The battle for Los Angeles, a subplot to the coaches but real enough to local NBA fans, opens tonight as the Lakers start their season at the Sports Arena against the Clippers.

Coaches Larry Brown and Randy Pfund give the rivalry equal importance: none.

To the Lakers’ Pfund, making his debut four days after Magic Johnson’s retirement, the priority is building a new team identity, or less delicately, survival.

“It’s a nice rivalry for the town,” Pfund said. “Our players will play hard and their players will play hard. But if you told me we could win every other game in our division and lose them all to the Clippers, it would be OK with me.”

To the Clippers’ Brown, who has seven new players, three in the super-heavyweight division, the priority is to start his touring health club in the right direction.

“I’d like to have more time, because we not only have a lot of new guys, I’ve got to be real sensitive with some of them,” Brown said.

“More than any other club that I can remember, I don’t have a clue about this one. All I know is we’ll be better as time goes on.

“The rivalry means absolutely nothing to me. When I came here, I used to hear all the time this

was a Laker town, we need to do this and that. I’ve always said, if you’re comparinganyone to the Lakers the last 10-15 years, you fall short. My feeling is, I just want to play well enoughthat people will want to see us play.

“I understand our players’ feelings. Every day you read about the Lakers. You have a little pride so you want to do well. To me it’s a goal of mine to have a franchise that commands the respect and the admiration the Lakers have.”

The newest edition of the Lakers has the same goal.

Besides Pfund, rookies Anthony Peeler, Duane Cooper and Alex Blackwell will be making their NBA debuts. James Edwards, a Clipper last season, begins his second Laker tour.

Brown has seven new Clippers: Stanley Roberts, John Williams, Mark Jackson, Kiki Vandeweghe and Jaren Jackson, plus rookies Randy Woods and Elmore Spencer.

The Clippers have not won a season series from the Lakers, but they ended a 10-year, 26-game losing streak last November at the Forum.

The Lakers subsequently won the series, 3-2, but finished behind the Clippers in the standings for the first time.

Laker-Clipper Notes

In a mild surprise, the Lakers cut Sean Higgins, the former Fairfax High star, and kept Alex Blackwell, a 6-6, 250-pound rookie free agent from Monmouth College in New Jersey. They put Jack Haley on the injured list and, for the first time, Magic Johnson on the voluntary retired list to get down to 12 players. . . . Clipper forward Kiki Vandeweghe did not play on the last exhibition swing because of a strained hip flexor but is probable tonight. Loy Vaught’s sprained left ankle is expected to keep him out of both this weekend’s games.

* TONIGHT’S GAME

Lakers vs. Clippers at

Sports Arena, 7:30 p.m.

Television: Channel 9,

SportsChannel