LOS ANGELES — In Clippers lore, which is no longer a comedy routine, much of the credit for this season’s rise to No. 2 in the West — 7 1⁄2 games ahead of the Lakers after Saturday — goes to a makeshift committee of coach Vinny Del Negro; the team president, Andy Roeser; and the assistant personnel director, Gary Sacks, who jumped in after their vice president for basketball operations bolted on the eve of last summer’s NBA free-agent signing period. On their own, they acquired Jamal Crawford, Lamar Odom, Matt Barnes and Grant Hill for this season’s club.

One unofficial, uncredited member of the committee, point guard Chris Paul, was the makeover’s driving force. Paul will be a free agent at the end of this season, and the Clippers are doing whatever they can to keep him happy.

Or, as a Clippers official with knowledge of last summer’s activity put it, “This is Chris’ roster.”

“Um, well, I think a lot of credit goes to our front office, too, for involving me in a lot of stuff that took place,” Paul said recently when asked about his role. He added: “I don’t know. I’m just happy because we really have a complete team.”

Complete it definitely seems to be, with the team entering today enjoying a 20-6 record — second in the NBA only to Oklahoma City — and a franchise-record 12-game winning streak. And with that success has come increasing recognition.

For the mostly inept Clippers of yore, the Christmas Day lineup was something for them to watch on television like urchins with their noses pressed against a window. But for the second season in a row, the Clippers are on Tuesday’s marquee, along with Miami, Oklahoma City, Boston, Chicago, the Knicks and, of course, the Lakers.

If the Lakers are still the headliners, facing the Knicks in a prime Christmas afternoon slot on ABC, it is as much because of their magical name as anything else.

The Clippers are still being eclipsed somewhat in Los Angeles by the Lakers’ tales of woe. Then again, if the Clippers have to be the caboose on Christmas, playing Denver in the last of five games while the Lakers go earlier, so be it. Prime game, late game, the Clippers, led by Paul, are for real.

They have played so well that it is easy to forget they lost their vice president for basketball operations, Neil Olshey, who made the deal to acquire Paul last December, then jumped to the Portland Trail Blazers last summer after the Clippers let his contract expire without offering him an extension.

But within days, the ad hoc Clippers committee was at work on the moves that added Crawford, Barnes, Hill and Odom to the team, although the acquisitions were eclipsed by the Lakers’ bombshell deals to land Steve Nash and Dwight Howard.

Going into the weekend, Howard and Nash had played two games together. The upgraded Clippers had the No. 2 player in assists in Paul (9.4 per game) and the NBA’s No. 2 bench, which was averaging 41.9 points per game going into Friday night’s victory over Sacramento. The Lakers? Their bench is No. 29, averaging 24.8.

Paul began shaping the Clippers’ roster even before he became part of it Dec. 15, 2011, conveying his conditions for committing himself to the team for two seasons during the trade negotiations with the New Orleans Hornets.

Paul wanted Blake Griffin locked up. The Clippers said they had every intention of doing so (and they did in July, signing him to a five-year, $95 million extension). Paul wanted to know if the Clippers would match Golden State’s four-year, $43 million offer sheet to center DeAndre Jordan. The Clippers did, and kept him.

Paul’s interest extended to how many first-round draft picks the Clippers were giving up to get him, not because he wanted to be flattered but because he did not want the Clippers, the team he was about to join, to mortgage their future.

Few NBA players have a clue who might be available two drafts in the future, but Paul, who remains active in youth basketball, can go further than that.

“That guy, Jabari Parker, I’ve been watching him play for three years,” Paul said of Parker, a 6-foot-8 high school forward from Chicago who has announced he is going to Duke. “Eric Bledsoe,” he added, referring to one of his backcourt collaborators on the Clippers, “was a camper of mine when I had my first point-guard elite camp.”

Gregarious and driven, Paul, 27, spent his first six seasons in the NBA with the too-often-ragtag Hornets, which was a surefire way to learn the importance of having a solid organization.

And if one is now being built in his image in Los Angeles, so much the better. After last season’s finish, one game behind the Lakers, exiting the playoffs one day before they did, the Clippers are focused as never before on re-signing Paul, starting with the once frugal owner, Donald T. Sterling, who has never had a team like this in more than three decades.

“I think we’ve put together the best roster we’ve ever had,” said Roeser, the team president and a veteran of 29 Clippers seasons, most of them gloomy. “Mr. Sterling has been more supportive than you can imagine. I think he’s hungrier than you can even imagine to see his team win a championship.”

But Sterling still has his foibles, like his disinclination to secure key employees for the future until the market dictates the price. As with Olshey, that is often too late. Del Negro, who guided the Clippers to a 40-26 record last season in his second year as coach, and is doing even better now, is on an expiring contract. Paul turned down a contract extension from the Clippers last summer, even while trying to turn the franchise into something he can call home.

“Everybody who knows me knows I get invested into things very, very quickly,” Paul said. “I’m all Clippers now and I’ve loved every minute of it, and we’re going to keep this thing going.”