Clippers get it done in crunch time
For a quarter, the Clippers happily pitted their strength against the strength of the Rockets’ defense. The Rockets’ strength won. But it was the wrong quarter.
The Rockets began the game defending as they draw it up. They were physical. They were disruptive. The Clippers went one-onone, as they typically do, running more iso than any other team in the NBA. The Rockets shut it down as they usually do, with only one team, the Oklahoma City Thunder, more effective at defending in iso.
The Rockets’ defense staked them to an early lead, then triggered a run that took the margin to 20.
The Clippers, however, had seen all that before. The Rockets were physical, but the Clippers’ stars were not about to crumble. The Rockets stopped them for a half. The Clippers had answers.
The Clippers on Wednesday scored 19 first-quarter points, fewer than any previous Rockets opponent this season other than a desperately shorthanded Mavericks team. Los Angeles rolled past the Rockets 122-116 by scoring 42 points in the fourth quarter, the most for a Rockets opponent this season.
Along the way, the Clippers helped demonstrate the difference between what the Rockets are even at their best and what they aspire to become when they grow up.
The Clippers masterfully executed in the fourth quarter, making 72.2% of their shots, four of six 3pointers, and not committing a turnover (they had eight in the first half, one in the second half ).
The Rockets excelled offensively, with center Alperen Şengün providing a worthy encore to his career-best performance the night before, getting a career-high 19 rebounds with a career-high 14 assists, along with 23 points for the fourth triple-double of his career. Since 1975-76, only Giannis Antetokounmpo, Larry Bird, Domantas Sabonis and Russell Westbrook (twice) also collected that many points, assists and rebounds.
But the Rockets became powerless to stop a veteran team that seemed to have figured them out.
“As much as we would like to adjust to the game from the beginning of the game, it took us a little bit,” said Clippers guard James Harden, who had 21 points and seven assists. “In that second half, we adjusted.
“I process everything, figure out what’s working and what’s not working, things that we can get better at, things that didn’t work in the first half. Just attacking, just being more aggressive, being more physical.”
The Rockets had the Clippers’ offense so bogged down early that Los Angeles had just two assists in the first quarter. Harden had four in the fourth. Much of that was from the Clippers’ sharpshooting. Other than a pair of 3pointers that Harden missed, the Clippers made 13 of 16 shots in the fourth quarter.
Kawhi Leonard, who scored 28 points, was 4-of-4 in the fourth quarter. Paul George, who had two points in the first half before scoring 19 in the second half, took two shots in the fourth quarter, both 3s that he made.
Finally, the Rockets tried to come up with something else. Holding a one-point lead with 3:22 left, the Clippers had made 11 of 15 shots. so coach Ime Udoka had the Rockets intentionally foul Los Angeles center Mason Plumlee. For one possession, it worked. A 68.6% shooter from the line, Plumlee missed both free throws.
On the next two possessions, with Udoka and the bench screaming for another intentional foul, the Rockets inexplicably did not send Plumlee back to the line. Leonard passed to George for a corner 3. Leonard hit a mid-range jumper through a Jabari Smith Jr. foul for a threepoint play. The Clippers led by five.
The lead change with 2:48 left was the first since the third minute of the game. The Clippers never looked back.
“They were making shots,” Smith said. “A lot of them were on me. I felt like I got scored on a lot. I pride myself on the defensive end. That just can’t happen with me being on the best player, Kawhi, and guarding Paul George, James on switches. They were getting a lot of easy buckets, rhythm jumpers.”
The Clippers got a lot of buckets on everyone. But as well as they shot in the fourth quarter, they were also able to execute their offense to get those shots. Many were well-contested.
But they were still the right shots for the right shooters.
“They’re so good, you definitely don’t want them to be comfortable, playing with rhythm,” Smith said. “We’ve got to muck up the game. I felt like we did that in the beginning. Great players make great shots.”
The Rockets were playing the second half of a back-to-back and fell to 310 in the second game when playing on consecutive nights. But they made 56.5% of their shots in the fourth quarter, three of five 3s. The Rockets’ 16-of-36 3point shooting was their best in a month. Udoka said fatigue in the second game of a back-to-back was “not at all” the issue.
“We let them be a little bit too comfortable and let them work out rhythm shots,” Udoka said. “We gave up 78 in a half. I don’t think that was fatiguebased.
“We did a better job (early) pushing them out, getting them off their spots. (In the second half), we stood behind, let them get to their spots. We guarded well in the first half and didn’t in the second half. They had three really good scorers that can get it going. You’d like to have a little more resistance or consistency between the two halves.”
Instead, the Rockets gave up more points in the second half than in any previous game this season. At 22-3 when bringing a lead into the fourth quarter before Wednesday, they fell behind by eight down the stretch. After holding their previous six opponents to an average of 110.8 points, the Rockets fell to 1-15 when giving up 120 or more.
The Clippers are 24-2 when scoring 120 points. They are 32-11 since the start of December, the second-best record in the NBA in that stretch. But the Rockets shut them down for long enough to know it didn’t have to fall apart.
“We came out with great intensity and energy, and we guarded them pretty well, and they kind of just resorted to one-on-one a little bit,” Rockets guard Fred VanVleet said. “We guarded pretty well oneon-one. In the second half, they did better in one-onone, and they started to move the ball.
“Man, that’s a good team. They’re one of the best teams in the league for a reason. They’re going to keep playing. They made some adjustments. They made some shots. Our defense, we lost control of kind of dictating.”
When they did, they lost control of the game, doing enough to get their hopes up, only to have them crushed.