The Nigerian poured in a career-high 30 points as Portland secured a much-needed 98-84 win over the Los Angeles Clippers to tie the series at 2-2 on Monday night.
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Paul was the biggest scoring factor for Los Angeles before getting injured in the third quarter, as he was the only Clippers player to get a bucket in the first nine minutes of action.
As Los Angeles stood shell-shocked, the Blazers took control, as a Davis rebound and layup gave them a 9 point lead with over seven minutes to play. “They executed their game plan”, said Blake Griffin in an NBA.com report. He subbed Crawford back into the game, sparking a Clipper run that cut Portland’s lead to one, and forced a Stotts timeout.
Prior to Monday’s Game 4, Paul was averaging over 26 points and eight assists per game in the postseason against the Trail Blazers. The Clippers were a net plus-553 with Paul on the floor but were outscored by 202 points when he was out of the game.
“It doesn’t look good”, Clippers coach Doc Rivers said after the game, although he called Griffin’s chances of playing in Wednesday’s Game 5 in Los Angeles “50/50”. The Clippers may have been able to survive and succeed without Blake Griffin for a good portion of the 2015-2016 regular season due to hand/quad injuries and a four-game suspension (struck a team employee), but a playoff series against two stars like Lillard and McCollum is far different than regular season games against Philly, the Lakers, the Timberwolves, and the Suns. But Los Angeles didn’t have many other options off the bench. The forward also had 10 rebounds and three blocked shots.
The Clippers were gunning for a commanding 3-0 series lead on Saturday but they just couldn’t get it done as they lost to the Trailblazers by 96-88 in Game 3. We said in the last recap that Plumlee showed some skill as a facilitator and could be a key in beating the Clippers’ traps.
You could see Paul’s impact in the first quarter, when he went 6-of-7 from the field and his Clippers teammates were a combined 3-of-17. For the Trail Blazers, Portland now has the added comfort of knowing Aminu and Crabbe have re-found their stroke. Defensively we couldn’t really muster a stop and when we did get a first stop we couldn’t get the second.
Golden State loses Stephen Curry for at least two weeks of the playoffs after MRI determines he has a sprain in right knee.
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In ATS trends, the Clippers are 5-1 ATS in their last six games against a team with a winning record and 10-4 ATS in their last 14 games overall, while the Blazers are 6-19-2 ATS in their last 27 Conference Quarterfinals games and 1-5 ATS in their last six games overall. “He’s the guy that gets them going and can single-handedly change the game”. “There’s nobody, probably in the league, that’s going to replace Chris Paul so there’s nobody clearly on our team that’s going to do it. As a group everybody pitches in”.
