Clippers’ Brand Works Hard, Flies Right

Elton Brand is the Clippers’ travelin’ man, and that has nothing to do with any movement of his pivot foot.

If Brand were in school and had to tell the class about his summer vacation, it would go something like this:

Teacher: “Next will be Elton. Please come forward.”

Brand: “Umm, well, let’s see, umm, gee. I went to North Carolina and then to Las Vegas and then to China and Hong Kong and South Korea and then to Japan and New York City and Toronto and back to New York and then I came home to Los Angeles and pretty soon I’m going to Russia and ... “

It has been only four months since Brand and the Clippers made their run in the NBA playoffs, losing at Phoenix in Game 7 of the second round, a loss that still stings.

“I sat and thought about that one for a couple of weeks,” Brand says. “My butt marks are still on my couch.”

That, however, was about the last Brand’s couch saw of his butt. Shortly after his marriage July 8 in North Carolina -- his wife’s name is Shahara -- Brand joined the U.S. national team for training in Las Vegas, then traveled for exhibitions in China, Hong Kong and Korea before the 10-day world championships in Japan.

After that, he flew home for some time with family in New York, interrupted that for a quick trip to Toronto and a film festival, then went back to New York and eventually back to his home in the Hollywood Hills. There, his butt was reacquainted with his couch just long enough to get ready for another departure.

Friday, the Clippers leave for Moscow, where they will train and play two exhibitions. This apparently is part of NBA Commissioner David Stern’s ongoing efforts to further indoctrinate the rest of the world in our game so that we can lose more in the Olympics.

But that’s another column for another day.

When Brand and the Clippers return from their faceoffs with hated rivals BC Khimki and CSKA Moscow -- just in time to get ready for a week of training in Santa Barbara, more exhibitions and opening day Nov. 1 (where else) in Phoenix -- Brand should be greeted by airline executives, carrying plaques. Did government subsidies or Brand’s credit card do more to keep the airlines aloft this summer?

If you calculate Brand’s off-season frequent-flier miles, tossing in that LAX-Moscow round trip shuttle, you get slightly more than 37,000.

Brand’s contract runs out after the 2008-09 season, and you can sense Donald Sterling’s wheels turning: “Well, Elton, you certainly will never have to pay for an airline ticket ever again, so we need to factor that into salary considerations and ... “

The Clippers’ travelin’ man remains their main man. He is the reason the excitement around Staples Center these days is not limited to new hotels being built across the street or to Kobe’s Lakers.

Brand averaged 24.7 points and 10 rebounds in the regular season, then 25.4 and 10.3 in the 12 playoff games. The Clippers beat Denver in five games, then wore down the Suns in seven before losing.

The most vivid memory of those days in May for Clippers fans is of 6-foot-8 Brand, facing up from 12 feet and swishing yet another shot. He was rhythmic, almost automatic. A basketball metronome.

But basketball is only part of the package. Brand, 27, has a chance to take over L.A. as few athletes before him have had.

He spent two years at Duke, a basketball factory that actually makes players read and write. He says he will finish requirements for his degree sometime, and when he says it, it sounds real. At Duke, his main courses of study were sociology and business.

“People and money,” he says, knowing that both fit his comfort zone.

He has his own foundation that provides, among other things, educational needs for at-risk teenagers in his hometown, Peekskill, N.Y. He started the Peekskill program two years ago with a $235,000 donation.

He is a role model without wearing it on his sleeve. Last Thursday, at a dinner in Beverly Hills for the charity Operation Smile, which provides reconstructive facial surgery to children worldwide, Brand was one of the main honorees, receiving the “Universal Smile Award.” He was interviewed for this column that day and never mentioned it.

When his national team brought home the bronze medal from Japan, another international sports disappointment for the U.S., he lent some perspective in the aftermath.

“People here have seen that we’re conducting ourselves as good people, good citizens,” Brand said in a story in The Times shortly after the U.S. had lost to Greece in the semifinals.

His sojourn to the Toronto Film Festival shows yet another dimension. His company, Gibraltar Entertainment, might have struck gold with a story about a pilot shot down behind enemy lines in Vietnam. The movie, “Rescue Dawn,” starring Christian Bale and Jeremy Davies, recently got a distribution contract with MGM and is expected to be released Dec. 1.

Brand will get a producer’s credit, but he says, “I’m just one of the people who put in some money.”

He says his main goal is an NBA title, but that Olympic gold is close behind.

“It’s an honor to play, to be asked,” he says. “When your country says, ‘We need you,’ it is a little hard to turn that down.”

With that commitment will come more airplanes and more miles. Because the U.S. failed to qualify in Japan, it has a last chance to make the 2008 Beijing Olympics in a qualifying tournament next summer in Venezuela.

The LAX-Caracas round trip is about 7,220 miles. Brand, our own Continental United American, will be there.

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