Adjustments Must Be Made

Life without Lamar Odom continued for the Clippers on Friday.

With their next game not until Sunday at Dallas, the Clippers practiced in Houston, going over some mistakes they made in their 12-point loss to the Rockets the night before.

“We are going to play hard and try to win games, but we are realistic that we’re missing Lamar,” said Coach Alvin Gentry, whose team is 9-9 since Feb. 1.

“It was a good workout for us, but it’s back to our m.o. for the season and that’s finding a way to correct things when we are going through tough times.”

Corey Maggette did a good filling in for Odom at small forward against the Rockets with 19 points and 12 rebounds. Gentry was pleased with Maggette’s effort.

“He did a heck of a job filling in for Lamar, I thought his play was great,” Gentry said. “But he has been playing that way for the last three weeks. He has been so under control and has allowed the game to come to him. When he does that, he’s such a tremendous athlete, he’ll have games like he had last night.”

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No one can blame rookie Quentin Richardson if he’s already looking ahead to the off-season. He started the season fighting for minutes off the bench and then started 28 games at shooting guard. But after suffering a toe injury in late January, he has had to adjust to playing a reserve role again.

“There are some things I have to improve on,” he said. “It’s been a season of learning the NBA game for me. I think I’ve played well for a rookie when I get minutes. But I know I have to play better.

“I have to work on my quickness, conditioning, ballhandling and shooting. Basically, everything about playing on the perimeter. This is my first true year of solely playing on the wing.”

Although the Clippers would love to have Richardson along with fellow rookies Darius Miles and Keyon Dooling spend most of the off-season in Los Angeles working out under the guidance of the team’s coaching staff, Richardson said he already has other plans.

“I will work out with [personal coach] Tim Grover in Chicago and also spend a couple of weeks in Miami working with Alonzo Mourning,” Richardson said. “Once the season ends, I will take off the end of April and part of May off and then start working out. I plan to play in a Chicago pro-am [summer league]. Darius may join me some in Chicago and play in the pro-am and with [Grover].”

That works for Gentry--as long as they work to improve.

“The summer is going to be important for each one of them,” he said. “They have to work on their game so they can come back better players. We’re going to finalize everything in the next week or so. But right now, we plan to have them back for workouts in June but we don’t expect them to be here the whole summer. We just want to stay on top of what they are doing. We will send [assistant coaches] Rex [Kalamian] and Igor [Kokoskov] to them to work with them some in their home towns.”