A Front-Runner Needed

Gilbert Arenas, please reconsider.

Lamar Odom, please come home.

The Clippers could use an established point guard such as Arenas, a free agent who rejected a lesser offer from the Clippers to sign with the Washington Wizards last summer, or an outsized playmaker such as the 6-foot-10 Odom, who bolted the Clippers via free agency to sign with the Miami Heat.

Instead, a little more than two weeks before the start of the regular season, Coach Mike Dunleavy has no clue who’s going to run his offense.

“It’s a concern, but it’s early,” Dunleavy said this week. “We made a run at a point guard this summer. We let one guy go, and we felt like we were going to get another one. It didn’t happen.

“We thought that we could get it done this way, but we’re going to have to have improvement here somewhere. Right now, it’s not good enough.”

Through nearly three weeks of training camp, including Tuesday night’s 128-107 exhibition victory over the Dallas Mavericks at Staples Center, nobody has stepped forward even to lead the competition, Dunleavy said.

The front-runners are Marko Jaric and Keyon Dooling, who between them have made only 14 NBA starts.

However, with Jaric off attending to visa matters Tuesday night, Dunleavy also tried shooters Eddie House and, briefly, rookie Marcus Hatten, at the point against the Mavericks.

“We’ve got a long way to go,” Dunleavy said before the game. “We need somebody to emerge at the position. I’m sure a lot of it is, you’re in a new system and you don’t see things that are right in front of you because you’re looking for something else.

“It’s not second nature to you, where the looks are, where the opening’s going to be, the quick reads. It’s going to take time. It’s a process.”

But the clock is ticking toward the Clippers’ opener Oct. 30 against the Seattle SuperSonics at Saitama, Japan.

“If it doesn’t improve,” Dunleavy said, “it will be a major concern.”

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He probably will be sidelined for the better part of a week, but tests taken on center Chris Kaman’s lower left leg came back negative.

“It’s very good news on Chris,” said Dunleavy, who had chastised the rookie for not better communicating the severity of the injury.

“No problems. We’ll probably hold him out three, four, five days, depending on how it progresses. The main thing is, we want to have him ready come the regular season.

“Even though every minute is really important to us, particularly for him because he’s a rookie, we don’t want to take a chance on setting him back.”

Backing away from his earlier comments, Dunleavy said Kaman was “just naive” in not taking himself out of drills. “Actually, it’s probably a positive thing to find out about somebody: Hey, they are tough, they’re willing to play with pain.”

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Jaric and center Predrag Drobnjak are expected to rejoin the Clippers in time for Thursday’s exhibition against the Phoenix Suns at Staples Center.

After participating in Tuesday’s shoot-around, the Serbs were scheduled to fly to Tucson later in the day en route to an appointment this morning in Nogales, Mexico, to take care of visa matters. They’re expected back in Los Angeles tonight.