CLIPPERS GET LATE HELP TO DEFEAT MAGIC
Stephenson makes big plays in fourth quarter and finishes with 13 points in 19 minutes.
CLIPPERS 107 ORLANDO 93
ORLANDO, Fla. — There were moments in the fourth quarter Friday night when Lance Stephenson looked more like a dynamo unleashed than a fringe player f iguring some things out.
He threw a lob for a dunk, stole a cross- court pass, spun for a layup and swished a jumper. He topped it all with a quote seemingly straight out of a tall tale for someone who hadn’t played in seven of 12 games recently because his coach thought he had better options.
“I feel like nobody can guard me in this league,” Stephenson said in all seriousness after helping the Clippers push past the Orlando Magic, 107- 93, at the Amway Center.
Those words held true for the Magic, at least, while Stephenson scored 13 points on six- for- six shooting in only 19 minutes as part of another barrage of smallish Clippers players.
Stephenson scored his f irst points on a 16- foot jumper to end the third quarter and only accelerated from there. He added 11 points and three assists in the fourth quarter amid a variety of highlight plays, all of which the Clippers needed with their primary two backup point guards sidelined by injuries.
“His start to the fourth was just phenomenal,” Clippers shooting guard J. J. Redick said. “Really, they were never in it after that.”
Redick finished the game with 20 points and Chris Paul added 21 points and six assists for the Clippers, whose starters all got back into the plus category after four consecutive games in
ORLANDO, Fla. — Sorry, Blake Griffin suitors. He’s probably not going anywhere.
“Blake’s ours and he’s going to stay ours,” Clippers Coach Doc Rivers said Friday.
Multiple teams have contacted the Clippers about acquiring Griffin since he punched a team employee, said a person close to the situation not authorized to discuss it publicly, but the team has no interest in trading its five- time All- Star power forward.
The Clippers have fielded calls involving various trade proposals but remain reluctant to part with a cornerstone of their franchise who, at age 26, was having possibly his best season before he was sidelined by a quadriceps injury the day after Christmas and subsequently a broken hand after a f ight with assistant equipment manager Matias Testi.
Griffin repeatedly punched Testi on Jan. 23 at a restaurant in Toronto, leaving Testi with a swollen face and Griffin with a broken right hand that is supposed to sideline him well into March. Griffin underwent a scheduled procedure on the hand Thursday that did not change the timetable for his return.
Rivers has said Griffin and Testi would both be welcomed back to the team, with Griffin expected to rejoin the Clippers after the NBA announces punishment stemming from the altercation. Griffin and Testi are longtime friends who got into a scuff le over teasing that went too far for Griffin’s liking.
Neither Griffin nor Testi accompanied the Clippers on their four- game trip that started Friday with a 107- 93 victory over the Orlando Magic at Amway Center.
Griffin, who has one more season and $ 20.1 million left on his contract, was averaging 23.2 points, 8.7 rebounds and 5.0 assists while shooting 50.8% in 30 games before being sidelined by a partially torn left quadriceps tendon.
“Blake, to me, should’ve been on the All- Star team,” Rivers said. “But I guess when you miss that many games, you can’t be. But his numbers were epic. They were historic numbers that he put up.”
Rivers said before the season started that he was continually monitoring whether the team’s core of Griffin, Chris Paul and DeAndre Jordan was progressing toward NBA title contention, with any significant slippage prompting the possibility of a franchise- altering trade. The Clippers apparently haven’t reached that point as the Feb. 18 trade deadline nears.
Hands- off approach
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has changed his opinion on the issue of intentional fouling, and so has Rivers. Neither wants it to continue past this season.
Silver recently told USA Today Sports he was “increasingly of the view that we will be looking to make some sort of change in that rule this summer. … It’s just not the way we want to see the game played.”
That jibes with the take of Rivers, a member of the league’s Competition Committee who wants the practice banned.
“I think it should happen and I’ve changed,” Rivers said. “And I’m not saying that because it affects me but it’s no fun.”
Rivers was alluding to teams intentionally fouling Jordan ( a career 42% freethrow shooter) for lengthy stretches, leading to more boring games. The coach acknowledged that his presence on the Competition Committee put him in an uneasy spot because of a perceived conflict of interest.
“I really don’t think I should have an opinion on it because it affects me and I think it just looks too disingenuous,” Rivers said, “so I just try to recuse, like when we’re having the meetings, I’m like, ‘ Come on, ask someone else, please. I don’t want to get involved.’ ”