LOS ANGELES — The Clippers are going all out encouraging fans to vote Paul George into the NBA All-Star Game for the eighth time. That’s going pretty well: after the league announced its second batch of voting returns last week, George was fourth among Western Conference frontcourt players.

But the Clippers haven’t yet been able to offer any encouraging news about whether George might be available to play in that event on Feb. 20 in Cleveland – or at any time in the near future.

“Not anything we’re ready to discuss right now, so really no update,” Clippers coach Tyronn Lue said before his team’s 139-133 victory over the Indiana Pacers on Monday afternoon at Crypto.com Arena – a couple of days past the three-week mark since the team’s Christmas Day announcement that George suffered a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow.

The Clippers indicated then that their star – who was their focal point without fellow All-Star Kawhi Leonard, and was leading them in points (24.7), assists (5.5) and steals (2.0), and was second in rebounds (7.1 rebounds) through 26 games – would be re-evaluated in 3-4 weeks, “at which point next steps will be determined.”

“He’s still working out and rehabbing,” Lue said. “But that’s about it.”

George wasn’t even able to join his teammates at Sunday’s game, Lue said, staying away because a close contact had tested positive for COVID-19.

“He wants to be able to come to the game but I don’t think he can right now,” Lue said. “(So he’s) just at home restless, not being around the team. He wants to be here, so we’re just trying to figure out a way to we can help him get into the building someway, but, like, we just trying to see. He’s just trying to figure it out, and kind of going from there.”

The Clippers would benefit from George’s presence – even on the sideline, the coach said.

“Hell yeah!” Lue said. “Just, you know, just seeing him and Kawhi around just to uplift the team and just being around the team, talking to the young guys. You see those guys in the locker room and on the bench, it gives you a different vibe, a different feel.”

SINGLE-DRIBBLE

That Nicolas Batum scored all of his 32 points in the second half was a wild enough statistic Monday. That he did it almost without putting the ball on the floor at all was another.

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The 33-year-old forward took one dribble to get himself open for a 3-pointer, but his other 10 baskets were either on catch-and-shoot 3-pointers or cuts to the basket.

That either illustrates Batum’s elite understanding of where to be and when – or it’s because, as Lue said recently, “Nico can’t dribble no more.”

Batum said he could dribble more – if the Clippers needed that from him.

But, he said, they don’t.

“We joke about it almost every day, every day we talk about it,” Batum said of Lue’s assertion that he’s done dribbling the basketball. “That’s just not really my job right now with that team. We have so many guys who can create stuff, so my job is more to facilitate the game, but if they want me to do it again, I do it. That’s fine. But we don’t need to.”