A Long Way to Go for Clippers

The Clippers have reached that delicate stage of the season. Their efforts have brought little results. The rookies’ bodies are telling them the season should be finished after this many games. The team’s chances of making the playoffs are as slim as Darius Miles.

And just when they started feeling good about themselves, by smashing the Lakers, playing well in a close loss to the Pacers and beating Denver, they went back east and started a five-game losing streak.

Make it six. Wednesday night’s loss to the Seattle SuperSonics was as demoralizing as they come. They lost the type of game you have to win: at home against a team playing on its second consecutive night. And even worse was the manner in which it happened: The Clippers blew a seven-point lead in the final minute, then went into overtime--and with the Clippers, the accent is on the over.

They might as well just go ahead and count it as a loss once regulation ends and the score is tied, because the Clippers are now 0-6 in overtime games.

So what could have been a nice starting point was instead undone by poor offensive execution and missed defensive rebounds at key moments. Patience is wearing thin.

“We’ve got to get rid of the excuse that we’re a young team,” Coach Alvin Gentry said.

The job just got tougher. They’re at the stage where they have to fight through the fatigue, refuse to accept the culture of losing and keep selling their fans on the promise of things to come.

“I look at turning around as continuing to compete every night,” Gentry said before the game. “Our No. 1 priority is to win games, but I do think there’s underlying things that are just as important, almost. And that is that we try to establish a professionalism here that is going to be in place for the long term, and that I think we’ll do things the right way and we’ll play hard.”

They have the playing hard thing down, but they still have a long way to go on the professionalism front.

That was evident at Tuesday’s practice, when Lamar Odom was AWOL and Gentry was angry. Odom had gone to Las Vegas for an autograph function Monday, then said he overslept and missed his flight home.

So Gentry fined him, then benched him for the entire first half of Wednesday night’s game. Odom didn’t get to remove his sweats until eight minutes were left in the third quarter.

Odom didn’t try to avert the blame. “I’m a man, I’m 21 years old,” he said. “I know when I made a mistake. I can look anyone in the eye.”

But it shouldn’t happen twice in the same season. He missed a practice in New York in November.

It remains to be seen whether this will cause an epidemic of missed wake-up calls. The real problem is, Odom has a chance to make Gentry’s job easier. It’s a tremendous benefit when the team’s best player is also its best practice player. But first he actually has to attend practice.

These are all aspects of playing in the pros and managing the NBA lifestyle.

It’s more than just guarding the pick-and-roll. It’s about knowing when and where to hang, learning how far you can push your body.

“Some cities you go out, some cities you just chill,” Keyon Dooling said. “It all depends on where you are. I know in Miami, I’ll be out, ‘cause I’m from down there.”

Many an NBA game has been lost in South Beach or Coconut Grove. If players start logging late-night outings in Cleveland or Sacramento, then they really have lost their priorities.

Conserving energy becomes more critical than ever at this time of year.

“It’s more physical now,” Dooling said. “Your body is getting tired. I played more games this year than I probably played in my college career. It’s definitely hard on your body; traveling, different time zones, different climates, things like that.”

Fatigue and inconsistency are menacing every team in the league at this stage.

The Sacramento Kings won at Portland in their most impressive victory of the season, then went to Seattle and lost the next night.

The Trail Blazers found a new level of futility with their 58-point night in Cleveland.

And those are teams with tangible incentives: the best record in the NBA and home-court advantage in the playoffs.

“We have to look at the big picture,” Gentry said. “And the big picture for us is we’re trying to improve and keep playing hard--with the understanding that we want to win games. That’s our priority, but I still think right now there’s more important things for us to try to establish. What we want to establish is we want to be more competitive night in and night out, and then eventually we’ll get to the point where we’re a little more experienced and understand how to win games and how to close out games.”

If the group sticks together, eventually they’ll learn those things. It has to happen, doesn’t it?

Right now, however, they’re still learning the basics of life in NBA.

“Don’t overload yourself, that’s all,” Miles said. “And just play hard.”

It’s such a simple task, but right now it’s the only way to measure the Clippers’ season. If they start looking at the numbers in the loss column, they will only get depressed.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com

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SEATTLE: 114

CLIPPERS: 110

SuperSonics need overtime, but send the Clippers to their season-high sixth consecutive loss. D8