Clippers don’t miss in clutch
Despite an 11-point third quarter, they ride George and Jackson to an 11th win in their last 12 games.
CLIPPERS 109 HOUSTON 104
One of the most unwatchable quarters of this NBA season began with a missed Clippers layup. Then Houston missed its own, grabbed an offensive rebound, only to turn it over.
The Clippers responded by throwing the ball out of bounds. The teams combined for three more misses before Rockets big man Christian Wood scored the third quarter’s first points, nearly 90 seconds in.
By the quarter’s end, the Clippers had mustered 11 points, their fewest this season in any frame, with as many baskets as turnovers (five). Houston could not pull away because it scored just 19 points, with five turnovers. In one painful, three-minute stretch, the teams combined for one basket, 10 misses and three turnovers.
The Clippers’ charmed run since March’s All-Star break has lasted for so long, while surviving so many short-handed nights like this — with forward Marcus Morris a late scratch for rest, Kawhi Leonard watching from the sideline and Patrick Beverley and Serge Ibaka not on the trip — that a quarter with this much disorder almost felt past due. Even if the opponent was the Rockets, a team with just four wins since Feb. 4.
Yet as unrecognizable as the Clippers’ league-leading offense looked in the third quarter, they reverted to a familiar form in the fourth. Back was the grit of a roster that has refused to wilt, no matter how many starters are missing, and along with it, the indefatigable offense of Paul George.
George scored 33 points to guide the Clippers to a 109-104 victory Friday at Toyota Center in Houston, scoring 10 points during a fourth quarter in which his team rebounded to score 33 points, outscoring Houston by nine. His last two were free throws with 7.4 seconds left to push the Clippers’ three-point lead to a more comfortable five. He also added a season-high 14 rebounds.
When Houston’s Kelly Olynyk answered quickly with a layup, Clippers guard Reggie Jackson made two free throws with four seconds to play, and it was fitting that his points ended the game when it was his three three-pointers early in the fourth quarter that propelled the Clippers (4319). He scored 13 of his 19 points in the final quarter.
It was ugly. The Clippers shot 40% and are 4-9 this season when shooting 42% or worse.
But it was a win — their 11th in their last 12 games.
“Not every game is going to be perfect,” George said on a videoconference. “That third quarter was an indication of that. We just couldn’t make a shot. And I thought just as a team we didn’t have a good rhythm as a team. We missed a lot of layups, we turned the ball over a lot. I turned the ball over a lot.
“But I think what turned it, [Terance] Mann made a big three, top of the key. And I felt once the team saw that, it kind of opened things up, and then Reg, you know Reg took over. Reg got hot.”
Coach Tyronn Lue credited assistant Dan Craig for switching from a zone-heavy defense to a man-to-man that blunted the drives of John Wall, who scored only two of his 27 points in the fourth quarter. But Lue’s deep sigh to end his videoconference was more about fatigue. This was the Clippers’ 12th game in 20 days.
In a condensed season with championship ambitions — the Clippers’ videos scouting opponents end with an image of a trophy, George said — practicality dictates resting key contributors wherever possible ahead of the postseason. Only 10 games remain on their schedule. The combination has taxed the rest of a roster already short-handed because of long-term injuries to Beverley (hand) and Ibaka (back). Ibaka practiced this week for the first time but Lue offered that update with measured optimism, saying the timetable for his return is unclear.
Guards have been pressed into playing forward at times. Forwards are playing center. Unusual lineup combinations have required vanilla offensive schemes. And still, they flew into New Orleans early Saturday ahead of a precious two-day break with hopes for the West’s No. 2 playoff seed still alive.
“We need bodies back and we need guys playing, because these guys are getting tired from the fact [of so many teammates] being injured,” Lue said. “My hat’s off to these guys. They played their butts off and they got the win.”