Moment Is Now for Livingston

The Next Big Thing is sitting courtside Thursday morning, baggy red sweatpants, tight braids, huge smile, two weeks until Clippers opening night, Christmas coming.

“I can’t wait,” Shaun Livingston says. “I want to show everyone I’ve grown leaps and bounds.”

On the Staples Center floor, Eric Smith, an associate of Sam Cassell, has just swished a baseline jumper from behind the basket.

“You see that?” I ask.

“I can do that,” Livingston says.

“Oh yeah?” Smith says, pulling out a $100 bill. “I’ll give you three tries.”

The Benjamin is laid on the court. Livingston’s steps behind it and cocks his wrist.

Miss. Miss. Miss.

There is hooting and hollering and high-fiving, but, while nobody is looking, Livingston takes one more shot.

Swish.

After two years of regulation inconsistency, The Next Big Thing has learned it’s all about the overtime.

*

Pick a summer morning, any summer morning.

Shaun Livingston, staying in Los Angeles for the first time, shows up at the Spectrum Club South Bay about 8 a.m.

“Actually, sometimes, it would be earlier than that,” says Richard Williams, Clippers strength coach. “He’d call me at 7 a.m. and say, ‘Where you at?’ ”

Livingston arrives and works the weights, does the stretches, then picks up a ball.

For the next hour and a half, he will take 500 shots.

Some of them will be with only his right hand. Others will be while he’s on the run. Some with his back to the basket. Others with him flying to the basket.

All of them will occur with his Ipod strapped to his left arm and rap music blaring in his ear.

All of them will count.

“Not to discount the work of anyone else,” says Jim Eyen, the assistant coach who was often there to rebound the shots, “but what Shaun did this summer, to go to those extreme lengths, it was above and beyond anything we saw.”

The workout will end in the early afternoon. But, then, sometimes, a couple of hours later, it will start again.

“We’d be in the gym working with other guys and here he comes, back for more,” says Williams.

Livingston will shoot another several hundred shots in the late afternoon, dodging the wild throws and stares of health club members who staked out their gym turf.

“I’ve been waiting my turn,” Livingston says. “I know this is the year I can earn it.”

Pick a summer morning, any summer morning.

Even the Fourth of July, when Livingston surprised everyone by showing up shortly after dawn.

Even when strength coach Williams returned to visit his family in Dallas -- Livingston and two teammates just went with him, spending a week working out in a high school gym.

“We told Shaun, just give us this one summer, trust us for this one summer, see what happens,” says Williams. “Well, we all saw what happens.”

You could see it the other night in Phoenix, when Livingston scored 21 points in 26 minutes with five rebounds and five assists.

“He was attacking the basket, moving through the defenders, doing all the things we thought he could do,” says Clippers Coach Mike Dunleavy.

You could see it Thursday night at Staples Center against the Lakers, when Livingston showed the versatility and resiliency that his fourth overall draft selection promised.

In the first quarter, he drove into the lane and scored on a running jumper. He later hung out around the three-point line and, when unguarded, swished a 22-footer.

Then, after throwing a bad pass, he didn’t cower, he charged, grabbing the rebound and starting a fast break that resulted in another basket.

As long as he is wearing a Lakers uniform, there is never any doubt that Kobe Bryant will be this town’s most exciting basketball player.

But this year, here’s guessing that Shaun Livingston will be the most fun.

“It’s never been a question of ‘if’ he could be that player,” says Dunleavy. “It’s always been a question of ‘when.’ ”

When, being now, a month after his 21st birthday.

When, being now, three years after he arrived here as a skinny high school kid whose growing body couldn’t handle the stress.

He’s gained 10 pounds this summer on his body, and five times that much on the weights.

“When he came here, he could barely do 50-pound dumbbells,” says Williams. “Now he’s doing 105 pounds.”

He was nagged by injuries in his first two years. Many fans never really saw him until the end of last season, when he came off the bench and sparked the Clippers to within a shot or two of advancing to the Western Conference finals.

By this spring, here’s guessing it will be Livingston in the starting lineup and Cassell coming off the bench, and the Clippers will be more Finals-worthy because of it.

Livingston is so impressive, Cassell has not only publicly endorsed him, but guided him.

“Sam understands my potential and my goals, and has really helped me on everything,” Livingston says. “I think we can work together on this thing.”

Cassell, for now, agrees, saying, “If he gets the job done, so be it. This is all about us winning and leaving our egos at the door.”

In the meantime, Livingston pays his $100 bet, straps some ice to his knee and heads home to perhaps watch some afternoon videos.

“I watch and learn from old Clipper games,” says the Next Big Thing, and now I can’t wait for the new ones.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.