Not a headline we could have written often over the past 30 years.

The Los Angeles Clippers look to have been asleep at the switch as the Dallas Mavericks pursued center DeAndre Jordan and said he would sign a four-year, $80 million contract with them.

The Clippers were pummeled by media, and even by one of their players, J.J. Redick, who on radio said the Clippers deserved an “F-minus” for not taking care of their most pressing bit of work — resigning their center.

But that all changed. The Clippers rallied, got their people together, went to Houston, Jordan’s hometown, to talk him around to staying in Los Angeles. It was an NBA “intervention”.

And at one minute after midnight tonight, he signed a four-year deal with the Clippers worth $88 million.

What a turnaround.

Jordan has been criticized harshly by many observers for not his change of heart. His verbal agreement with Mark Cuban‘s Mavericks should have made him stick with his decision. His refusal to take calls from Cuban or the Mavericks once word leaked out that the Clippers had Jordan in a full-court press also seems to rankle.

Verbal contracts can be binding in many situations, but they clearly are not in the NBA, which has a dead period, between the time free agents may be pursued and when they actually can sign those contracts, and it was eight days.

If the Mavericks want to lash out, they perhaps should examine their own inaction as the Clippers sent their quick-response team into Houston.

Jordan appears to be a guy who has trouble making decisions, and for him to leave the only club he has known … and then for players and officials of that team to reach out to him … it was a dangerous period for the Mavericks, who staked their chance at rebuilding on the fly on bringing in the NBA’s leading rebounder and a 71-percent shooter.

Cuban said Jordan could be “Shaq-like” with the Mavericks and mocked the Clips for making Jordan “something like their eighth” scoring option.

He should have waited till Jordan signed on the dotted line.

I like this. The fact that the Clippers fought back, that they didn’t go “negative” on Jordan, and were able to summon their two best players, Chris Paul and Blake Griffin, from vacations, to go to Houston, and that Doc Rivers went, too, as well as other club officials. That is so un-Clipper-like.

And now it enters into club lore. How the Clippers delegation — once they had made Jordan feel welcome again, and he had agreed to sign — seemed to deny the Mavs access to him as the final hours of the no-sign period ticked down. How they fought back and kept their third-best player, and remained contenders for an NBA championship.

Twitter followers will remember the tweet from Griffin, showing a chair pushed up against what presumably was the front door of Jordan’s home — keeping the Mavericks at bay.

Jordan broke no rules. And a businessman as canny as Mark Cuban should have known that an oral contract in this case was not worth the paper it wasn’t written on.

Bravo, for the Clippers. Can’t say that often.