Camby is Clippers’ rock

It’s not exactly true that Marcus Camby is the Last Clipper Standing, although there aren’t many of them.

Of course, there are none like him, with the Clippers or anyone else.

At 34, chained to a team that started the weekend 8-30, he has just moved ahead of 23-year-old Dwight Howard for the league lead in rebounds and is No. 2 to him in blocked shots.

After missing the preseason with a heel injury and easing back into action in November, Camby has since averaged 39 minutes, suffering through their 12-game losing streak while their other big-money players went to the sidelines.

Best of all, he’s a great locker room guy. Six months after joining the franchise, under protest, in a funk, he’s holding the franchise together.

It’s not usually a coup if someone holds an awful team together but with Baron Davis, Zach Randolph and Chris Kaman, who have a combined 55.3 scoring average, pedaling stationary bicycles, this isn’t your usual awful team.

Dire as the situation seems, it’s a new day in Clipper Nation, where hard times traditionally weren’t just hard, but apocalyptic, with coaches’ heads rolling every year or so and players fleeing as soon as they could.

In an accident of Clippers history, owner Donald T. Sterling gave Mike Dunleavy that $5.4-million-a-year contract that has two seasons to go after this, introducing something new: stability.

Given stability, anything is possible, as the Lakers’ embattled Mitch Kupchak proved when the bottom dropped out after they traded Shaquille O’Neal.

Without stability, you have Clippers history.

Of course, Sterling did it when he had a lot more confidence in Dunleavy than he has today. Without that contract, the owner would have axed his coach a year ago, instead of merely fantasizing about it to The Times’ T.J. Simers.

The Donald probably went off for that very reason, frustration at not being able to fire his coach to show that he’s on the case, or whatever.

Sterling could still fire Dunleavy, but would probably make him work as general manager, rather than buy him out, which would be (argh) giving him money to go away, or worse (I’m sorry, Donald, I have to mention it), letting him go and paying him to sit around.

In the year Dunleavy’s contract has bought him, he has been able to transition from the old Kaman-Elton Brand-Sam Cassell-Corey Maggette-Shaun Livingston nucleus to one with Camby, Kaman, Randolph, Davis, Al Thornton and Eric Gordon.

Brand’s departure last summer seemed devastating. Now that they’ve seen Camby, Brand’s a great guy who used to play for them, whom they wish the best.

Brand is about to turn 30, coming off Achilles’ tendon surgery, with an $80-million contract under which he’ll make $18.2 million in 2012-2013, when he’s 34.

Camby will make an average of $9.8 million this season and next and appears open to re-signing. With Brand, the Clippers kept trying to play grinding low-post basketball.

With Camby and, who knows, perhaps with Kaman one day, the way is open to a more entertaining, higher-scoring future.

Of course, if nothing is possible without belief, which Camby has kept alive, belief isn’t possible without results, so they’d better fulfill some of that potential soon.

“It’s really hard to see the future right now,” Camby says, “but yeah, when you have a guy like Chris and a guy like Zach and Baron, that’s three guys who can start on any team in the NBA.”

When Denver traded Camby to the Clippers -- for a No. 2 draft choice, in an outright salary dump -- he, as well as his Nuggets teammates, were in shock for weeks.

Nor had the picture brightened when Camby reported in the fall, looking like he didn’t want to be here, amid fears he would ask to be traded.

“It was a tough situation, me being in Denver for six years,” says Camby. “I thought that was the place I’d end my career. That was the place my wife and my kids called home so it was definitely a shock. . . .

“Coming from a winning situation to coming here to the Clippers, who have had ups and downs for the last couple years, was definitely tough for me to get adjusted to.”

Some players don’t know how to do anything but play hard and make the best of the situation. There aren’t many but Camby is one.

“I love the situation,” he says now. “My wife loves it out here. My kids are acclimated to the school system. The weather’s great.”

There’s a term for someone who’s among the leaders in rebounds and blocks, scores in double figures, shoots 50% and is No. 4 among centers in assists: All-Star.

Of course, with Yao Ming leading the voting and a groundswell of support expected for Shaquille O’Neal, Wilt Chamberlain would be a dark horse if he was a Clipper.

There’s a term for someone Camby’s age, who competes at his level, no matter how bad things are, for no other reason than the referee just threw the ball up.

It’s: Great.

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mark.heisler@latimes.com