Time for Odom to Blossom

It seems that no matter what the Clippers do, the Lakers do it bigger, more dramatically, to greater notice.

Those feel-good Clipper seasons quickly were forgotten once the Lakers began their championship push, and now the national debate about what’s wrong with the Lakers has overshadowed the Clippers’ own disappointing start.

Not only have the Clippers failed to meet the high expectations for 2002-03, they’re behind last season’s 39-43 pace.

Why? The “in” things. Injuries, inexperience and an inability to win the close games.

And don’t forget the interminably long absence of Lamar Odom. Chief among the injuries that derailed their training camp and have cost them 89 games of service so far are the lingering injuries that have kept Odom from wearing a uniform for anything other than photo day.

A few players in the locker room will remind you that the team is missing the guy who only a year ago was considered their leader and best player.

“He just has a certain swagger about him that carries over to the whole team,” point guard Keyon Dooling said. “He’s a special player.”

The Clippers say that against Golden State on Dec. 28 Odom will return from the ankle and wrist injuries that cut his season short after 29 game last year.

“I’m even thinking of coming back on the 27th [at Phoenix],” Odom said Friday night. “I might not put too much pressure on myself on the road.”

After he does come back, then what? If Shaquille O’Neal wasn’t enough to fix the Lakers, can Odom snap the Clippers out of their sputtering ways? Can Odom be counted on to do anything?

The league already busted him for not following through on his drug rehabilitation program, and the Clippers thought he didn’t stick to his injury rehabilitation program diligently enough in the off-season. In Odom style, he didn’t show up for Friday night’s game against Phoenix. He said he went to the airport to pick up his kids, then got into a minor car accident, so he decided to head home.

Clearly, Odom and the Clippers need to grow up. The question is, will they be given the time to mature?

It’s too early to give up on this season.

“It’s coming along,” Odom said, when reached by telephone. “We haven’t been able to get on the court together because of injuries. By mid-January, you’re going to see this team jell.”

It will be up to Donald Sterling to keep this team together for its fruition. Nothing happens overnight in the NBA. It usually requires years and years of failure and frustrating before it gets right.

It took the Laker core of Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, Robert Horry, Rick Fox and Derek Fisher four years before they won a championship.

If you want to talk about teams that are actually winning games these days, Chris Webber, Vlade Divac and Peja Stojakovic have been together in Sacramento for five years, and it’s the fifth year of the Steve Nash-Michael Finley-Dirk Nowitzki crew in Dallas.

Meanwhile, it’s possible that Odom’s career in L.A. is down to about 55 games. He’ll be a restricted free agent this summer (if he receives another offer, the Clippers can retain him by matching it), giving him about 3 1/2 months to show his stuff.

“Everybody in the league knows I can play,” Odom said. “I’m not auditioning. I’m trying to win games for the Clippers.

“[The contract] is really not important now. What’s important is trying to win games for the Clippers. I’m not trying to play Nostradamus and see what’s going to happen next.”

When Odom does return to action, it will have been more than 11 months since his last NBA game.

“I think that the one thing I want our guys to avoid -- and the people in general to avoid -- is to think he’s going to step on the court and be the same player that he was before he got hurt,” Clipper Coach Alvin Gentry said.

“I tried to talk to him about it and make sure that it’s not going to happen overnight. You can’t sit out of baseball for a year and think you’re going to be able to hit an off-speed pitch or a fastball in the major leagues. You can’t be a quarterback and sit out for a year in the NFL and think you can throw out routes to Jerry Rice. It’s an adjustment to get back. He’s got to understand that.”

Dooling missed almost all last season with an ankle injury.

“There’s several things that’s hard,” about coming back, Dooling said. “For one, getting over the injury, trying to tell your mind that your body’s better. For two, timing. Three, just getting your cardio back. Lamar’s been working hard at it, so I think he’ll be fine.”

Don’t expect too many home runs or touchdown passes from Odom. Right now, the Clippers would settle for a guy who can give them another low-post threat, a guy who can swing the basketball and create one-on-one when the game slows down in the fourth quarter.

More often than not, the Clippers can’t answer the challenge in crunch time.

Only two Clippers know what it’s like to play for a winning team in the NBA: Sean Rooks with the Lakers in the late 1990s and Wang Zhizhi with Dallas last year. Neither was on the court much during crunch time.

They didn’t have a fourth-quarter lead to blow Friday night, thanks to missed layups in the first half, errant jump shots in the third quarter and no Elton Brand the entire game (strained right calf injury).

And so we wait for the maturation of this team to come, while wondering how many of these players -- or Gentry -- will be around to see it, searching for any sign of maturity.

So how’s the Christmas shopping coming, Lamar?

“I’m all done,” he said.

It’s a start.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com