The game was all but over, there was no way the Los Angeles Clippers could come back? Wrong. Most people across the country probably turned there TV’s off and headed to bed figuring the Memphis Grizzlies had the easy win. Boy will they be shocked in the morning.
All the Clippers did is finish the game on a 28-3 run to defeat the Grizzlies 99-98. Memphis O.J. Mayo hit a three pointer to put up the Grizzlies with 24 points in the 4th quarter with 9:12 remaining. Memphis only made one more field goal the rest of the way. The Clippers outscored the Grizzlies 35-13 in the 4th quarter. In the modern shot clock era the Clippers rally from down 21 points entering the 4th quarter tied the record for biggest comeback in the playoffs.
The Clippers were losing so bad that head coach Vinny Del Negro wasn’t going to put star point guard Chris Paul back in the game but Paul begged and got his wish. Paul hit a pair of free throws with 23.7 seconds left to give the Clippers the victory. The Grizzlies missed a last second shot.
The Clippers lost Caron Butler to broken hand but his replacement came up big. Nick Young hit 3 three pointers in the Clippers 4th quarter rally.
In the 4th quarter the Clippers made 13 of their 17 field goal attempts including 5 of 6 from beyond the arch.
Check out the comeback on video below.
The players and coaches reaction to the historic comeback.
“At the end of the third quarter Coach took me out and I went nuts,” Paul said. “I said, ‘Coach give us a chance! Give us a chance!’ He puts us back in there and [Eric] Bledsoe got going, Nick Young was amazing and Reggie Evans gets the game ball, he was unreal.”
“Guys think they’re ready, but they’re not,” Del Negro said. “It will be a different level. It will be a different intensity, and when you’re in a series and teams take away certain things, your weaknesses show more.”
“I don’t think I’ve been part of a game like that ever,” Clippers Blake Griffin said. “It was unbelievable.”
“It’s crazy. It’s a blessing,” Nick Young said. “It shows how hard we fought. How we rallied together as a team, and just made stops down the end.”
“We just got careless,” Memphis coach Lionel Hollins said. “We just lost a little bit of our discipline from a defensive perspective. But offensively, we just started walking it up and trying to throw it into the post instead of running it in. We ran earlier. We attacked. We were in transition earlier. We just stopped doing that and got conservative and it cost us.”
This is only one game but you have to wonder if Memphis can recover from this.
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Tags: Los Angeles Clippers