Los Angeles Clippers forward Grant Hill will miss at least 3 weeks with bone bruises in his right knee, meaning he is going to be sidelined for at least the 1st week of the regular season.

“It’ll be about 2 weeks,” Hill expounded before getting treatment before the Clippers’ exhibition game against the Los Angeles Lakers last Wednesday night. “They’ll look at it again in 2 weeks.”

Hill last played Oct. 14 when the Clippers beat the Miami Heat 99-89 in an exhibition game in Shanghai. Hill, who had 8 points, 3 rebounds and 3 assists in the game, said he essentially hurt his knee before the trip.

“I kind of tweaked it before we left for China and I played a couple games in China,” Hill expounded. “It’s feeling better. It will be a couple more weeks. We’ll see.”

Considering Hill hasn’t played or practiced since Oct. 14 and simply will be re- evaluated in 2 weeks, there’s a good chance he will be out longer than 2 weeks. However, he doesn’t believe the injury is serious.

“This is nothing,” Hill related. “It happens. A few guys are banged up, but the important thing is we’ve got a lot of depth. Regardless for who’s suiting up and good to go when things start for real, we’ll go with who we’ve got and hopefully, I’ll be back soon. … I’ll be good. It will be all right. They just want to make sure it’s all right. They do not want it to linger.”

Paul and Crawford were held out mainly to give them rest as the Los Angeles Clippers play 3 games in 4 days, including a back-to-back to finish the preseason. Paul hurt his right thigh in practice last Tuesday. Baseball spreads

Billups who has been involved in full-contact practice and scrimmaged since the team returned from China, remains out indefinitely. Billups, who had season-ending surgery to fix a torn left Achilles tendon in February, won’t play in the preseason but is expecting to return sometime in November or December.

Odom, like Hill, hasn’t played or practiced since Oct. 14, when he had 4 points, 3 assists and 2 rebounds in 20 minutes against the Heat. He is also dealing with bone bruises in his knees, which is a result of coming into training camp overweight.

When Del Negro was asked what he would tell those who have asserted Odom is not in shape, he simply smiled.

“He’s not. They are right,” Del Negro related. “You tell the people that they’re absolutely right, but he knows that, we all know that and he’s working every day. He was trying to battle through this injury but it got to a point where it wasn’t making sense, so that is when we tried to change the process for him. He knows he needed to be in better shape coming in and then he tried to tax his body a little bit and this is the result.”

“Lamar is probably ahead of Grant,” Del Negro said. “He’s working each day right now and he’s feeling good, we will see how he feels next week’ practice and see where we are for Wednesday.”