The Lakers are getting all the attention these days but Staples Center’s other tenants, the Clippers, are still the one leading in the standings, by two games after Wednesday night’s 90-77 rout of the New Jersey Nets.

Elton Brand scored 19 points, Sam Cassell had 17 and both got to sit out the fourth quarter as the Clippers won their third game in a row and their sixth in eight, following a 2-7 slide.

It was a horrific night for the Nets, who started a four-game trip by losing by 11 points at Utah before things got really difficult. Wednesday night they shot 38% and were never in the game, trailing by as many as 22 points.

”Sam is the so-called head of the snake,” New Jersey Nets Coach Lawrence Frank said. ”Sam is what makes this team go. With Sam, you always feel like you have a chance.”

”It’s no different than what we have with Jason [Kidd.] Regardless of whether he [Cassell] gets off to a good start or a bad start, he lifts his teammates’ spirits up. I think it was a good example, them being down 19 at Golden State and they kept on plugging away,” he adds.

The worst of the Nets was the best of them, Vince Carter. Their leading scorer at 24.6 points a game, he had three in 27 minutes Wednesday, missing eight of his nine shots and turning the ball over five times before leaving in the third quarter because of a stiff back.

”They beat us pretty good when we played them in Jersey,” Coach Mike Dunleavy said, ‘’so we knew what they were capable of.”

”I think our guys know how important it is to win these types of games. They’re coming into our house and we’ve got to defend it. For the most part, we have. A couple of times we laid an egg, but we’ve generally been good. Then you have to fight and claw on the road.”

On Friday, the Los Angeles Clippers will do just that as they travel to the rocky mountains of Denver, Colorado to face the red-hot Denver Nuggets at Pepsi Center. When it’s all said and done, Clippers will eventually have to deal with a loss to Carmelo Anthony.