LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles Clippers dropped a pivotal Game 5 with their 96-92 loss to the Utah Jazz on Tuesday at Staples Center.
Chris Paul led the way for the Clippers with a game-high 28 points, while J.J. Redick contributed 26 points.
After a sluggish first three quarters offensively by both teams, things heated up in the fourth.
LOS ANGELES – The first-round playoff series between the Los Angeles Clippers and Utah Jazz is about control.
The best-of-7 series is tied at one game apiece, and there’s a reason: Each club has managed to successfully control aspects of the game that it has needed to win.
The Clippers thirst to play faster and in transition, while the Jazz deliberately play as if their entire team were running offense while slogging through thick molasses.
Game 1 went to the Jazz, who held the Clippers to only 95 points, but needed a buzzer-beater from forward Joe Johnson to declare victory. But while the Clippers again scored under 100 points in Game 2, they played faster – “more downhill” as the team likes to call it – and with more aggression, allowing them to come away with a 99-91 victory.
LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles Clippers find themselves in an unenviable position coming into Game 2 tonight against the Utah Jazz.
After Los Angeles won seven consecutive games to end the regular season in order to secure home-court advantage in the first round, the Jazz snatched it away with a Joe Johnson buzzer-beater that gave them a 97-95 win on Saturday.
Now, the Clippers face a must-win situation if they want to avoid going down 0-2 in the best-of-seven series.
Clippers forward Marreese Speights said at Monday’s practice that the team will need to “go out there and play Clippers basketball” in order to come away with a 1-1 split.
“We’re not really worrying about going out there and losing because that’s gonna be hard for us to do,” Speights said. “We’re gonna go out there and play hard and play smarter than we did in Game 1.”
Utah managed to slow down the Clippers’ fourth-ranked offense and keep itself within striking distance throughout the game, giving Johnson the opportunity to sink his all-time-leading eighth career buzzer-beating shot. Clippers coach Doc Rivers said the team simply needs to play better in Game 2.
“We can’t turn the ball over, we have to have more possessions and we have to play at a better pace,” Rivers said.
One adjustment the Clippers want to make is getting J.J. Redick easier looks at the basket. Redick attempted only six shots Saturday and scored seven points in 27 minutes.
Rivers said he doesn’t worry about Redick getting shots because when teams focus attention to him, his teammates usually reap the benefits. But that didn’t happen in Game 1, Rivers said.
“I thought we spent too much time trying to get J.J. going, quite honestly,” Rivers said. “J.J.’s gonna get going. We’re gonna get him shots. But when we’re not getting him shots, we need to be getting layups and other shots, and we didn’t do either one.”
Chris Paul said the team will “definitely” have to do more to get Redick more shots.
“J.J. is our best shooter on our team,” Paul said. “That’s our job as a team and even my job as a point guard to try to find him more open looks. We’ll try to do that.”
Jazz guard Joe Ingles drew the main assignment of guarding Redick on Saturday. He said Sunday that when guarding Redick, he tries to make his shots tough and play as physically as possible.
“Just keep chasing. Chasing, chasing, chasing,” Ingles said of the key to defending Redick. “He’s tough to guard. He doesn’t stop.”
Johnson said he expects the Clippers to come out tonight with a sense of “desperation (and) urgency.”
“I feel like we’re gonna get a great Clippers team in Game 2,” Johnson said.
To combat that hungry Clippers team, Jazz head coach Quin Snyder said Utah will have to take care of the ball.
“We can’t help their pace by turning the ball over,” Snyder said. “We can’t help transition by having lapses.”
Paul echoed Rivers’ sentiment that the Clippers need to improve all aspects of their game if they want to go into Utah tied 1-1.
“Our defense has to be better, our pace, our tempo – everything has to be better,” Paul said. “Had we won that game, we still would’ve needed to do things better.”
Game 2 is at 7:30 p.m. at Staples Center.
LOS ANGELES – With Wednesday night’s 115-95 win over the Sacramento Kings, the Los Angeles Clippers earned home-court advantage for Round 1 of the NBA Western Conference playoffs.
The Clippers and Jazz finished the season with identical 51-31 records, but because Los Angeles won its season series against Utah 3-1, the Clippers own the tiebreaker.
The fourth-seeded Clippers are riding a seven-game winning streak into the playoffs, while the fifth-seeded Jazz are coming off back-to-back wins over the Golden State Warriors and the San Antonio Spurs.
This is the fourth consecutive season the Clippers will have home-court advantage in the first round. The team has won two of the previous three series, most recently in a 4-3 victory over the San Antonio Spurs in 2014-15.
The Jazz have missed the playoffs each of the last four years. The last time Utah made the postseason was the 2011-12 season, when they were swept by the Spurs in the first round.
These two teams don’t have much history playing each other in the playoffs. The last time they met was 20 years ago, in 1997, when Utah swept Los Angeles 3-0 back when teams played only five games in the first round.
“I think we’ve played them six times, maybe, including the preseason, so we’d better be comfortable with them,” Blake Griffin said after Wednesday’s game of the team’s comfort level in playing the Jazz. “We’re about to get real comfortable with them.”
The series starts Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Staples Center.
THE MATCHUP
In four regular-season games against the Jazz, the Clippers won three and allowed Utah only 89 points per game. The Jazz scored under 80 twice.
The Clippers, however, averaged 98 points over the four games, but scored under 90 in two of them. For context, the Clippers averaged 108.7 points in the regular season.
The dip in offense possibly points to Utah’s turtle-versus-hare approach to basketball. The Jazz rank last in the NBA in pace, averaging 93.6 possessions per 48 minutes, according to ESPN.
Clippers head coach Doc Rivers said Utah can either score quickly or take 23 seconds to shoot the ball. So his team will have to be ready to play at different speeds throughout the course of a game.
“We have to be ready to grind it out,” Rivers said. “We want to play at our pace, and I would say in a couple games, that’s gonna happen. But in a couple games, it may not happen and we still have to try to win that way, too. So we just have to be ready for whatever is presented.”
MIDDLE MEN
The matchup to watch in this series is likely between the two centers, DeAndre Jordan of the Clippers and Rudy Gobert of the Jazz. The big men are the focal points on defense for both teams, and provide plenty of offensive punch as well with them getting open on rolls to the rim or receiving drop-off passes off dribble penetration.
Jordan averaged 13.8 rebounds and 1.65 blocks per game in the regular season, while Gobert averaged 12.8 rebounds and led the league in blocks with 2.64 per game. Practically all of their scoring opportunities come in the restricted area.
Rivers suggested that the two players were almost like mirror images of each other.
“He’s DJ in a lot of ways,” Rivers said of Gobert. “They’re very similar. They’re both dominant defensively and they both cause havoc offensively that you don’t see with the roles to the basket. (Gobert) is gonna be a key figure in this playoff series. We’re gonna have to do a good job on him.”
DEFENSE, DEFENSE, DEFENSE
Griffin said the key to the series against the Jazz is defense. And if the games between the two teams during the regular season are any indication, the Clippers have fared well on that end of the floor against the Jazz.
But Utah is no slouch on that side of the ball. The Jazz rank third in the NBA in defense efficiency, allowing just 102.7 points per 100 possessions, according to ESPN. The Clippers rank 13th in that metric at 105.8.
The two teams essentially swap spots when looking at offensive efficiency. The Clippers are fourth in the league at 110.3, while the Jazz are 12th at 107.4.
Paul Pierce isn’t worried about how the Clippers will play on offense against the Jazz.
“The biggest thing for us is gonna be our consistency with the defense and rebounding,” Pierce said. “We know we could score with pretty much anybody in the league. But it’s gonna be how well we consistently defend, keep teams out of transition, keep our turnovers down and rebound the ball.”
PREDICTION
The Clippers and Jazz are evenly matched statistically speaking, and both teams will enter their first-round series with all of their key players available. Austin Rivers expects to return from his hamstring injury in either Game 3 or 4.
The Jazz should win at least one game at home, where they boasted a 29-12 record during the regular season. But the playoff experience on the Clippers’ roster, plus their bevy of offensive weapons, should be the deciding factor.
Clippers in 5.
LOS ANGELES – Tuesday was a night of messages for the Los Angeles Lakers.
The Clippers sent the message that they were the vastly superior team, beating their hallway rivals 133-109 after making 15 3-pointers and leading by as many as 37 points.
Lakers head coach Luke Walton sent his team a message to start the second half by benching all five starters after they gave up 70 points to the Clippers and trailed by 30 after only 24 minutes of play.
“The most important (message) was that playing without a certain amount of effort isn’t gonna be acceptable or tolerated,” Walton said after the game.
Alex Vejar: Journalist 