He’s the Clippers’ E-Ticket to Stars

NBA All-Star game ballots are already available online, and if it’s not too early for fans to start voting, then it’s not too early for me to start campaigning for Elton Brand.

Watching his play during the first three weeks of the Clippers’ season was enough to convince me. At times he’s unstoppable on offense, and he has an increasingly nasty streak on defense, taking it personally when opponents come into the lane.

Then I checked the numbers: 24.1 points and 10 rebounds a game, both ranking 10th in the league, making him the only player in the top 10 in both categories. Field-goal percentage: 57.1%, good for sixth. Blocked shots: 2.4 a game, eighth.

I was all set to hop aboard the Elton Brand All-Star Train when the coach of the Clippers told me I was on the wrong track.

“You can make the jump to MVP,” Mike Dunleavy said. “If he plays like this ... these numbers, they’re past All-Star.”

Whoa, Casey. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Just as I’m not prepared to say the Clippers are as good as the San Antonio Spurs because each team won eight of its first 10 games, I’m not going to buy Brand as the league’s most valuable player. Yet. (But I reserve the right to upgrade my ticket.)

Let’s set the target a little bit lower, which should be enough to please this success-starved team. After all, this franchise has had only one MVP (or first-team all-NBA player, for that matter) in its history: Bob McAdoo, back in the Buffalo Braves days of 1974.

We’re talking about a team that has made only four appearances in the All-Star game since moving to Los Angeles in 1984: Marques Johnson in 1986, Danny Manning in 1993 and 1994 and Brand in 2002.

Brand got his trip to Philadelphia for All-Star weekend only as a last-minute replacement for the injured Shaquille O’Neal.

To Brand, that still counts.

“I was there, they called my name, I ran out, got a bucket or two, enjoyed the festivities,” he said.

It wasn’t that Brand had never played at an All-Star level. But his trade from the Chicago Bulls to the Clippers in 2000 brought him here when the Western Conference had a glut of talent at power forward: Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Karl Malone and Chris Webber, for starters. How would you like to try cracking that lineup? That would be like auditioning against Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan and Robert Duvall for a part in “The Godfather.”

Now Malone has retired, Webber has been traded to the Eastern Conference -- Brand has moved past him anyway -- and knee surgery has sidelined Amare Stoudemire until at least February.

That leaves Duncan, Garnett, Dirk Nowitzki, plus the sleeper candidate Zach Randolph, who is quietly averaging 19 and 10, among the other power forward candidates.

Last season, Brand’s value was picked up by only the statheads at the website 82games.com, who found that Brand ranked sixth in the league in importance to his team, according to a formula that accounts for scoring margin with and without him in the game. Brand’s plus-minus of plus-14.7 was right behind the 2005 MVP, Steve Nash; Duncan was No. 1 at 16.6.

Voters should take into account the work Brand put in this off-season. He lost weight, improved his post moves, worked on his face-up game and ball-handling skills and extended his shooting range. He isn’t letting up now that the season has started.

“He’s going hard every day,” backup forward Chris Wilcox said. “He’s in the gym early every day, he’s leaving late. He’s just working hard. So he deserves it. Everything that he gets, he deserves it.”

Now that Brand is doing all of this for a winning team it should elevate his standing in the eyes of the fans who vote for the starters or the coaches who select the reserves. The fast start already earned him the NBA’s Western Conference player-of-the-week award Monday.

“When the team does well, the individual accolades come,” Brand said.

Brand might have forgotten that little truism after seven seasons without a winning record in the NBA, but apparently he still remembers his sophomore year at Duke, when he was the consensus national player of the year on a team that reached the NCAA championship game.

The veteran point-guard play of Sam Cassell is credited for the biggest boost in Clipper confidence. Cassell has assumed control of the team, which easily could be construed as a slap in the face if Brand wanted to put his ego first.

“I don’t mind,” Brand said. “I look at it like, you’ve got a guy like Steve Nash coming to a team like Phoenix [last year]. The same team that we smacked around the year before, he came in and they were winning a lot of games. A great point guard can do that for a team. I don’t mind it at all.”

The fact is, Brand is still Mr. Clipper. He has been a classy representative of the franchise since the day he arrived, and continues to welcome all community and media obligations.

By my count, he picked up another 30 assists Monday when he joined his teammates and coaches in handing out meals, clothing and Thanksgiving turkeys to needy families at the St. Joseph’s Center in Santa Monica.

His mind was more on the holiday Thursday than the All-Star game in February. His priorities, as always, are in the right place.

He said he was thankful for “family, friends, being able to take care of your family, enjoy your family,” he said. “Everyone’s in good health, good spirits. When you see people less fortunate, it kind of reminds you you have a great life.”

With Christmas just around the corner, a slew of All-Star votes would be a pretty good gift idea for the guy who has everything.

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/adande.