LOS ANGELES — Ringing Staples Center’s bowl on a videoboard, and projected dozens of feet high in the corners of the arena’s highest reaches, the Los Angeles Clippers’ marketing campaign has been impossible to miss this postseason.
But “Playoffs Our Way” has never rang so true as Saturday.
For better or worse this postseason, the Clippers have carved a playoff path that is uniquely difficult, uniquely theirs and continues yet again.
For each of their first two rounds, they have now lost the first two games, then lost the opening minutes of the third. meeting. But facing another quasi-elimination Game 3 — no team in NBA history has won a series when trailing 3-0 — they have yet to lose control of their season, yet again.
For the second time in as many weeks, the Clippers cannot be counted out after rallying again to win a critical Game 3, this time a 132-106 win over Utah that cuts their deficit in this second-round series to 2-1 entering Monday’s fourth game.
Paul George walked off the court after 31 points, his first 30-point game since April 23, waving to fans, having enjoyed the final minutes resting on the bench next to co-star Kawhi Leonard, whose 34 points and 12 rebounds finally helped the Clippers’ stars outduel anything Utah threw at them.
Donovan Mitchell scored 30 for the Jazz but was unable to take the game over at its start and finish, helping the Clippers win a shootout. He limped off the court late in the game with an apparent foot injury.
The Clippers made 19 of 36 three-pointers to Utah’s 19-of-44 shooting from deep. Utah could not overcome its 16 turnovers, which led to 24 points for Los Angeles.
Reggie Jackson added 17 points for the Clippers, making five of his six three-pointers.
When the Clippers took a timeout after only 74 seconds, having already allowed Joe Ingles two open three-pointers and with them an 8-0 Utah lead, it bordered on self-plagiarism from their first-round script.
Yet so did what followed.
Just as against Dallas, the Clippers not only looked undaunted by the unenviable hole they’d dug, they played looser, as if channeling Lue’s comment before tipoff that “our confidence has not wavered, we’re not shaken.”
Fast and effective traps of Mitchell far from the three-point arc helped hold the phenom scoreless in the first quarter for the first time in any postseason quarter since 2019. Struggling to find driving lanes against the switches, Utah committed two shot-clock violations in the opening minutes.
The Clippers’ focus on their game plan carried over to offense. As soon as three-time defensive player of the year Rudy Gobert went to the bench, George immediately dribbled deep into the paint against his replacement, Derrick Favors. It led to a miss but set a template for the Clippers’ plan of attack. Leonard targeted Favors on the very next possession, getting an up-and-under layup that contributed to their 20 paint points before halftime — double their first-half output from Game 2.
But those adjustments would have meant nothing without their most important of Game 3: The aggression of their stars who had been outplayed in this series’ first two games.
Charging from behind on a trap midway through the second quarter, Leonard ripped Mitchell’s spin-move dribble away and turned the steal into a transition dunk for a seven-point lead, then blocked Mitchell’s wild shot attempt in the paint only seconds later. Although Leonard made only four of 12 shots in the first half, rarely allowed Utah’s defense to take a breath. Not even halfway through the third quarter, he’d blown by Royce O’Neale and evaded Gobert for a right-handed dunk and layup on consecutive possessions to push the Clippers’ lead to 14. He scored 12 in the third quarter.
For as much as Lue lauded the way George had read Utah’s defense and found open teammates earlier in the series, such deference had reached its limits. After 18 shots in all of Game 1 and 17 in Game 2, George attempted 16 before halftime Saturday, making eight.
When Utah cut its 17-point deficit to only eight with four minutes to play in the third quarter, George found his drive to the rim stifled, then relocated to the corner in front of the Clippers’ bench and sank a nerve-settling three.
Mitchell limped to the locker room with six minutes to play but quickly returned to the bench and draped an arm around coach Quin Snyder. Their chat was still happening as Leonard and Batum made three-pointers within 38 seconds to extend their lead to 21, a hole even Mitchell could not overcome.
