My, how quickly times change. The Los Angeles Clippers arrive in Madison Square Garden tonight to play the Knicks, and it would seem they are on a roll. They’ve won seven of their last 10 games and have an increasingly sure grip on the final playoff spot in the Western Conference. A few years ago this would have been a fantasy for most Clipper fans, as their team had been the brand name for futility in the NBA for decades, but now such a season must qualify as a mild disappointment.

In the past three seasons, the Clippers have progressed from 28 to 37 to 47 wins, and last season they took the Phoenix Suns to Game 7 in a scintillating Western Conference semifinal. Many in Clipper Nation thought the next stop was membership among the Western elite. This season has qualified as a bracing reality check. Are the Clippers victims of expectations or are they coming up to speed after a slow start?

It’s mostly the former. The Clippers winning streak is a result of a soft schedule. Although they have beaten New Jersey and Chicago during this run, most of their recent wins have come at the expense of patsies like Memphis, Boston, Seattle, Golden State, and a badly banged up Milwaukee team. Faced with an, ahem, tougher opponent like Toronto on Sunday, Los Angeles got thrashed 122–110. Nevertheless, the Clippers bear no resemblance to the poor excuses (your starting center: Michael Olowokandi!) that used to characterize Los Angeles’s other team. But they face some daunting obstacles in the near future.

Although the Clippers are new to the national stage, they are not a young team. Their best player, power forward Elton Brand, is 27, point guard Sam Cassell is 37, swingman Corey Maggette is 27, and shooting guard Cuttino Mobley is 32. This is a group that isn’t likely to get much better than their current level of play and should slip some, especially in its backcourt.

The performance of the young members in the Clipper rotation, guard Shaun Livingston and center Chris Kaman, have been harder to gauge. Livingston’s game is evolving slowly; his shooting has improved and his turnovers are down slightly, but he’s inconsistent. The thing to remember to remember is that he’s 21 and could still take a big step forward.

Kaman, 24, has been the target of much ire among the Clipper faithful. Last season, he had his breakout campaign, averaging nearly 12 points and 10 boards a contest while shooting well and getting to the line more often. He was rewarded in the off-season with a lucrative contract extension, and he has regressed considerably. He’s averaging just over nine points and seven boards. What’s worse, his shooting percentage is lower than Livingston’s. He looked like he was getting going in December, but his play in the new year has been disappointing.

Although both Kaman and Livingston are lottery picks, both project to be solid players rather than stars. That leaves the Clippers as a team with an aging core and a lack of youthful replacements. The Clippers are starting to look like the George Karl-era Milwaukee Bucks, a squad good enough to make the playoffs for a few years, but a clear level or two below the elite teams.

That’s why the next few months will be crucial to determining the future of this Clipper unit. The team has only two difficult contracts to trade, Brand, a 20 and 10 guy who you’d want to keep anyway, and Kaman, whose performance will make him even harder to move. With top-level talent on the market like Pau Gasol and Vince Carter, Clipper GM Elgin Baylor should look to package some of the midsized contracts in order to bring in an impact player. The Clips can sweeten a trade package by including the Timberwolves’ unprotected no. 1 next season. This isn’t a team with an opening window of contention; instead the window is already open and will soon start to close.

In the meantime, the Clippers might want to run an offense that isn’t quite so rooted in the ’70s, before the three point shot was added. No team is as allergic to shooting from behind the arc as the Clippers. Seven out of eight shots in their offense come within the arc. Small wonder the Nets looked so stunned when Mobley hit the three that beat them two weeks ago; that play couldn’t have been in the game film. The Clippers are 30th in the three pointers attempted a game this season, and they ranked 29th last season.

Their allergy to distance shots may be one reason that their offense struggles. This season they rank 18th in Offensive Efficiency (points scored per 100 possessions); last season, they finished 17th. They might open the floor for Brand a little more if opposing defenses were forced to defend a larger swath of court. And Mobley and Tim Thomas are shooting well from behind the arc. It might be time for coach Mike Dunleavy to draw up a few more plays to take advantage of their marksmanship.

Without some changes, the Clippers will indeed have peaked, and the brevity of their run will seem like more cruelty from the hoops gods to their long suffering fan base of L.A.’s other team.

mjohnson@nysun.com