Point guard Chris Paul led the team with 19 points on 6/11 shooting. During that game, Blake Griffin dropped 28 points in just 29 minutes to lead San Antonio’s rout.
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He finished the game with 11 points. Against an elite team like the Spurs, the reserves were able to outscore the starters 58-48. This will likely mean more playing time for the likes of Paul Pierce (12 minutes a game), Brandon Bass (9 minutes a game), and Alan Anderson (11 minutes per game).
For the Spurs, Kawhi Leonard led the team with 27 points and 9 rebounds.
Goran Dragic added 21 points and seven assists, James Johnson ended with 19 points, eight rebounds and six assists and Tyler Johnson had 14 points and six assists for Miami, which shot 53.6 percent overall and went 11-for-22 from 3-point range.
The Spurs started the second half with a good defensive possession, and then passed the ball around to an open Danny Green to cut the lead back to single digits.
With Griffin out, the Clippers’ offense has remained as potent as ever thanks to Doc Rivers wisely switching things up to a pick-and-roll heavy attack with Paul and DeAndre Jordan.
The Clippers are having some mid-season injury blues, which is something that they probably would have liked to avoid, following early-season lethargy that gave them 5 losses (4 of them easily avoidable) in a 7-game stretch. The Spurs made last ditch effort run near the end, but it was not enough.
A top performer from the first half was Clippers SG J.J. Redick. After scoring only 49 first-half points, the Warriors rolled up 68 in the second half. Los Angeles converted 6-of-13 (46.2 percent) from behind the arc compared to 2-of-6 (33.3 percent) for San Antonio. While hitting 50 percent of their shots, they kept the Spurs to 38.5 percent shooting.
“The great players are a nice blanket for guys, but when you take that blanket away, now you have to play”, Rivers said.
The Spurs played without veteran Manu Ginobili after Spurs coach Gregg Popovich chose to rest the 39-year-old Argentinian before the trip.
Before leaving, Paul passed Kevin Garnett (16th) for career steals with 1,859. The intensity of the injury is still unknown, and we don’t know if Chris Paul is going to play against the Mavs or not.
Clipper woes: They will be without star forward Blake Griffin for about a month after he underwent arthroscopic right knee surgery on Tuesday.
Leonard scored 21 points to lead the Silver and Black against the Rockets.
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San Antonio offensively could not get anything going. “Without him, this group knows we have to play very well to win games, and very hard, and I think you can see that”.
