Clippers counting on return from collapse
LOS ANGELES— Chris Paul’s teammates figure he might need more time to fully recover from his role in one of the ugliest playoff collapses in NBA history.
With the Los Angeles Clippers’ season riding on Game 6, Paul knows he doesn’t have that luxury.
The Oklahoma City Thunder are back at Staples Center on Thursday night, and the Clippers must shelve their memories of the mistakes late in Game 5 that cost them a chance to close out the series at home.
Blake Griffin and Jamal Crawford went to work on Paul’s mind on the bus ride to their flight home from Oklahoma City after the Clippers blew a 13- point lead in just over four minutes. The fiasco culminated in the All-Star point guard’s touch foul on Russell Westbrook to
set up the winning free throws, sandwiched between two brutal turnovers by Paul — all in the final 14 seconds.
“He was visibly upset, and I told him that game is not on one guy,” Griffin said Wednesday at the Clippers’ training complex. “It’s not on him. We made plenty of mistakes down the stretch, plenty of mistakes throughout the game that could ultimately change the outcome. That idea that the game is on him, you understand what he’s saying, but it’s not on him by any means. We still have two games left to play.”
The Clippers’ roller coaster of a postseason has careened into another valley after the Thunder stormed back from near-certain defeat with the help of Paul’s mistakes and a much-debated out-of-bounds call with 11.3 seconds left.