Paul George leads Kawhi-less Clippers to win in Utah, 3-2 series lead
Paul George #PaulGeorge
SALT LAKE CITY — The thing about having two superstars … is that you have two superstars.
The night after learning they’d lost Kawhi Leonard indefinitely with a right knee injury he suffered late in Monday’s Western Conference semifinal victory, seven-time All-Star Paul George carried the Clippers to a 119-111 victory over the top-seeded Jazz, one of the most notable wins in franchise history.
Taking into account that the team that wins Game 5 in a best-of-seven series moves on about 82% of the time, the odds following Wednesday’s win are on the Clippers’ side that’ll be able to advance – for the first time in franchise history – to the conference finals.
The fourth-seeded Clippers take a 3-2 series lead into Game 6 on Friday night at Staples Center – where, for the first time this season, COVID-19 restrictions will be relaxed so that a capacity crowd will be permitted to watch them take a shot at team history.
The second-seeded Phoenix Suns await the winner of the Clippers-Jazz series.
To get within a game of advancing, the Clippers had to survive a gut check in Salt Lake City, where they managed without Leonard – and despite the Jazz burying a team playoff-record 17 3-pointers before halftime.
George made sure of it.
Down their All-NBA first-teamer, the Clippers’ All-NBA third-team honoree told Coach Tyronn Lue before Wednesday’s game, “I got you.” Then George went out and scored 37 points on 11-for-17 shooting, in addition to grabbing a playoff career-high 16 rebounds and dishing five assists.
“He’s special,” Clippers guard Reggie Jackson said of his friend. “He gave us everything we needed and then some.”
It was George’s third consecutive game of 30 points or more and also his 12th consecutive playoff game with at least 20 – a Clippers record. He also joined Elton Brand as the only player in the organization’s history to have at least 30 points, 15 rebounds and five assists in a playoff game.
That’s enough, Serge Ibaka suggested on Twitter, to shut up detractors who piled on after George’s stretch of poor shooting in the Orlando bubble during the 2020 postseason.
Lue concurred.
“I have a lot of respect for PG,” the coach said. “You can’t judge a guy’s career off what they do off one series. I know a lot of great players who have bad series or a bad game or a bad two games in a series – but whenever he has a bad game they want to make a big deal of it. It’s whatever. Just keep playing. Keep being who you are and at the end of the day, you know, you can live with the results.”
That’s the idea, George said.
“The beauty here is I get to (play) with one of the best in the world in Kawhi, and now Kawhi is down,” said George, who tapped into his experiences as a young star playing in big playoff games in Indiana.
“It was just that mindset being back in Indy, having to set the tone and come out and lead a ballclub. That’s really the mindset I came out with. It was nothing that I had to prove. It was nothing that I had to be surprised about myself.
“I just dug into a place that I’ve been already in my career, and again, it just came down to trust. Everybody just allowed me to lead and they kept pushing me. They just kept me into a great mental space.”
George’s hefty contributions in Game 5 – as well as substantive second-half efforts from Jackson (12 of his 22 points in the fourth quarter) and Marcus Morris Sr. (12 of his 25 points in the third) – sent most of the 18,007 Jazz fans streaming to the exits before the final buzzer at Vivint Arena.
The Clippers also got a lift from second-year wing Terance Mann, who started in place of Leonard and finished with 13 points, including a brazen dunk on the Jazz’s talented 7-foot-1 center, recently named the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year for the third time in four seasons.
Nicolas Batum came in handy, too, with nine points, seven rebounds and four steals – which brings his playoff total to 21, more than anyone this postseason besides Leonard (23).
The Clippers were emboldened by the fact that they trailed only 65-60 at halftime despite Utah’s first-half 3-point extravaganza. Led by Bojan Bogdanovic’s seven first-half 3s, Utah went 17 for 30 from deep before intermission – a franchise record by five.
“Them making 17 3s and only being down five on the road, I felt great about it,” Lue said. “I knew we had to clean some things up but being only down five and having a chance to win a game on the road, I really felt good at halftime.”
Gobert had a similar feeling, though it was more of a sinking sensation.
“I didn’t feel like we were playing with a sense of urgency at the beginning of the game,” Gobert said. “Obviously we were doing a great job making shots and scoring, and in a way, I wish we would have missed shots so maybe we would have thought that we need to play some defense to win this game. We just didn’t.”
George eclipsed the 21.5 points per game he averaged in Games 1 and 2 in Utah before the break, entering halftime with 22 points in 18 minutes on 9-for-14 shooting, plus eight rebounds.
And as the game wore on, the Jazz continued to miss the calming presence of Mike Conley at point guard. The All-Star has missed every game this series with a strained hamstring.
Without him, they cooled all the way off after the break, going 0 for 10 from behind the arc in the third period and just 6 for 22 from the field overall – with Gobert (17 points, 11 rebounds) responsible for three of those buckets. Utah made only three of 34 3-point attempts in the second half.
Meanwhile, Morris turned up the heat for the Clippers, playing all 12 minutes of the third period and going 5 for 6 from the field for 12 points that helped L.A. gain control.
And then Jackson again proved clutch, going 4 for 6 (and 2 for 3 from deep) in the final period to continually thwart the Jazz, who trailed the whole fourth quarter but did cut the deficit to 100-97 when Donovan Mitchell converted a 3-point play with 5:46 left – after which Jackson connected on back-to-back baskets.
The Jazz lost despite having six players score in double figures. Bogdanovic led Utah with 32 points (finishing 9 for 17 from 3-point range) and Mitchell scored 21 points on 9-for-16 shooting, his fewest points in a game this postseason and the first time in six outings that he didn’t exceed 30 points.
“This series is not over,” Mitchell said. “We got a lot of life left to give, a lot of juice to give and we just got to go out there and play with a level of desperation that we’d never played with before, otherwise we’ll be home.”
The Clippers shot 51% from the field in Leonard’s absence after he played such a critical role in helping them win Games 3 and 4.
“Our season is alive because of his shouldering of all the work he’s done,” George said. “We got to hold it together and continue to keep this boat afloat until he returns.”