Series reaches serious level

It’s certainly not Lakers-Boston Celtics, and it still hasn’t touched some recent playoff-stoked rivalries (Lakers-San Antonio Spurs, Lakers-Sacramento Kings, etc.).

But it’s starting to get a more edgy tone to it: Lakers-Clippers.

After a near-miss in the playoffs last spring, one that cost this city its own Hallway Series, the Lakers and Clippers meet for the first time this season with the Lakers as the home team and with the two teams atop the Pacific Division.

Until recently, the Clippers expected to lose to the Lakers, and usually did. The Lakers lead the all-time series, 126-43, but the teams split the last two seasons with two victories each.

In the process, the Clippers’ expectations have changed. They’re now talented enough to defeat any team regularly, players said, even their higher-profile Staples Center co-dweller.

“We go into these games expecting to win,” Clippers forward Elton Brand said. “We’ve split with them over the last couple of years, and we’ve had a better record than them over the last two years.

“I’m not saying they don’t go into it also thinking they’re going to win, but we definitely go into it thinking that way. In the 2001-02 season, when I first got here, it wasn’t like that. But it’s different for us now.”

How different? The Clippers finished two games ahead of the Lakers in the Western Conference last season and were the West’s sixth-seeded team, one spot better than the Lakers.

The Clippers also went further in the playoffs, losing to Phoenix in seven games in the conference semifinals, one round after the Lakers lost to the Suns, also in seven.

Six months later, the Lakers might still be getting used to all this.

“Did they dethrone us last year as the favorite team in town?” Lakers Coach Phil Jackson asked rhetorically. “That was what they said in the process, all the hype. So I guess we’re the underdogs, trying to come back and find a way to get into this scrap that they’re going to have, and go forward with it.”

Then Jackson was told the season series was split last season.

“Oh, it was?” he said, smiling. “So we did pretty good.”

Jackson, who has a 19-5 record against the Clippers as the Lakers’ coach, acknowledged a friendliness between the teams, in a way only the dry-humored Jackson could deliver.

“They go to parties together,” Jackson said. “They have friendships together. We have mutual respect between a lot of the members of both teams. I know the owners like each other. I know that Don Sterling has been eating off of Dr. [Jerry] Buss’ plate for years.”

The Clippers have been hidden over the years by the Lakers, who dominated headlines with engaging personalities and championship runs that became the norm with Magic Johnson in the 1980s and later continued with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant.

But the Clippers, who made the playoffs only three times before last season after moving to Los Angeles in 1984, have created enough noise for Buss to notice.

“They’re terrific material, no doubt,” the Lakers’ owner said in an interview last month. “I think we figured out that they had 18 out of 20 lottery choices. It’s not a big surprise that they eventually gained some material, but it does surprise me that they kept it. That’s certainly a change in philosophy, probably a welcome one to the fans of Los Angeles.”

The Lakers are 7-3, the Clippers 6-2, and each team has room for improvement.

Bryant is still trying to regain the form that made him the league’s scoring leader last season. His progress from off-season knee surgery has been gradual, turning him temporarily into a distributor instead of an attacker. His 22-point scoring average is a generation behind the 35.4 points he averaged last season.

For the Clippers, Brand has shown signs of fatigue from a long off-season, Shaun Livingston is still in the developmental stages and Chris Kaman’s numbers are down to 7.3 points and 5.8 rebounds per game after he averaged 11.9 points and 9.6 rebounds last season.

Adding fuel to the rivalry fire, the Pacific Division suddenly looks like one of the league’s best, placing an increasingly large burden on the four regular-season games between the Lakers and Clippers.

“Every game within the division, we’ve got to take it,” Clippers forward Quinton Ross said. “That’s the way we look at it, so we have to come out focused.”

As for a rivalry, there’s one final voice necessary for quorum.

“I think if we meet in the playoffs, that’s when games really become rivalries,” Bryant said. “That’s when you really take the next step. It’s tough to kind of take the next step and become a rivalry in the regular season. Playoffs is usually when that happens.”

mike.bresnahan@latimes.com

jason.reid@latimes.com