End Of The Season For The Los Angeles Clippers

Even before the game ended, Los Angeles Clippers guard Chris Paul was already congratulating James Harden and Dwight Howard before returning to the bench. He later walked onto the court to embrace Trevor Ariza.

The Clippers guard stayed for the last 18 seconds of the game before quietly walking back to the locker room of the Toyota Center. The Clippers lost to the Houston Rockets in the seventh game of their best-of-7 Western Conference semifinals. The Clippers were earlier declared the favorites in the series before losing the last three games of the series.

The Clippers was leading by 19 points in the third quarter of Game 6 before they collapsed and lost by 12 points.

Los Angeles Clippers forward Blake Griffin was disappointed as he said there was nobody else to blame, but themselves. The team was optimistic on Sunday as they looked forward to its first two games against the Golden State Warriors for the conference finals. However, the Houston Rockets prevailed as they advanced to the second round for the first time in eight years.

Shooting guard JJ Redick of the Clippers said the end of their season felt like a wake or a funeral. Houston became the ninth team in the history of the NBA to come back from a 3-1 deficit to win a series. It was also the first time this happened since the Phoenix Suns won against the Los Angeles Lakers in 2006.

The first possession of the Los Angeles Clippers may have been an omen as Matt Barnes stepped out of bounds. The nine-point lead of the Rockets increased to fifteen points in the second quarter, and seventeen in the third. The first quarter saw seven turnovers committed by the Clippers as they failed to properly execute inbound passes. The team ended up with a total of eighteen turnovers in the game.

Los Angeles Clippers Lose To The Houston Rockets - image credit: latimes.com

The feeling was so bad that they were unable to make the plays they normally execute, said Griffin. The Game 7 loss was the first for Griffin, DeAndre Jordan and Paul as teammates.

While the deficit was reduced to three points at some point in the third quarter and eight in the final minutes of the game, the team missed an opportunity to bring down to game to within five points following a missed three-point attempt by Redick.

The Los Angeles Clippers only made around 33 percent of the three-point-shots in the series, which is lower than their regular season average of around 38 percent. Harden had 31 points in the game while Ariza added 22 points for Houston. Redick said the Rockets were relentless throughout the game while they were not.

Doc Rivers, coach of the Clippers, said the series dynamics shifted more following the lack of effort by the team in Game 5 compared to its Game 6 collapse.

Rivers said in Game 5 that they were ready to go home if they were able to pressure the Rockets. He added that he was getting help for Paul, Griffin and Jordan during the off-season as he said he will renew the contract of Jordan. The lost was the second time Paul was unable to move into the conference finals in his ten-year career.

Paul quoted Ricky Bobby, who said if “you’re not first, you’re last” and being close was not good enough for the Los Angeles Clippers.

Posted by Andre Monohan on Tuesday May 19 2015, 9:49 AM EDT. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under World. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0