Blake Griffin's Triple-Double Puts Clippers in Driver's Seat vs. Rockets
With Chris Paul out and the beleaguered Los Angeles Clippers barely recovered from a brutal first-round series, the Houston Rockets approached Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals confident they could win at half-speed.
Until Blake Griffin ran them over.
Houston squandered a golden opportunity to notch a series-opening win on Monday, bumbling its way to a 117-101 defeat. Sensing the leadership void Paul's absence created, Griffin stepped in with 26 points, 14 rebounds and 13 assists in 40 minutes.
It was his third triple-double in his last eight postseason games, and his second in a row, which puts him in rare company, per NBA on ESPN:
ESPN Stats & Info also noted that his consecutive stat-stuffing efforts hadn't happened in over a decade:
Before we touch on what Griffin and the Clippers did to steal a 1-0 series lead and home-court advantage, it's only fair to first emphasize just how conspicuously poor the Rockets' effort was.
Houston came out like a team that believed it had already won, and it proceeded to tick off every box on the "how to give away a game" checklist.
The Rockets coughed up nine first-quarter turnovers, which gifted the shaky Clippers transition points in the early going. For a team missing an offensive orchestrator, nothing could have been better for the Clips than those easy buckets.
On the night, Houston committed 24 turnovers, matching a season high, that led directly to 34 Clippers points.
James Harden was a particularly egregious offender, relinquishing possession nine times in 37 minutes all by himself. And because he only got to the foul line six times in the contest, Houston didn't get a chance to set its defense as often as it normally does.
The signs of missing efforts were everywhere. Houston lost the battle on the boards by a 42-35 margin, was constantly late on defensive rotations and generally lacked any sense of urgency.
Dwight Howard might deserve a nod for his 22 points, 10 rebounds and five blocks on 9-of-13 shooting, but it would have to be a small one. He was at the center of a defense that surrendered 117 points to a team that started Austin Rivers at point guard, so it's hard to get too caught up in praising him.
Besides, the real story of this game was Houston's total failure to secure what should have been an easy win.
That's certainly what ESPN's Amin Elhassan, the San Antonio Express-News' Dan McCarney and Basketball Insiders' Nate Duncan (along with scores of other observers) focused on as the final seconds ticked away:
The Clippers, of course, deserve credit.
Griffin was fantastic after looking a bit hesitant early. Rivers finished with 17 points and four made triples, bouncing back from a sloppy start that could easily have crushed his confidence.
Jamal Crawford logged 32 minutes off the bench and scored 21 points. His stand-in duty as a distributor wasn't pretty (he turned it over six times), but it gave the Clippers another threat down the stretch.
DeAndre Jordan had a double-double, J.J. Redick hassled Harden effectively and Matt Barnes scored 20 points on 8-of-11 shooting.
It was an all-hands-on-deck effort, because without Paul, it had to be.
The Clippers scrapped to trail by just four at halftime, then Griffin took over to build a third-quarter lead. And a 12-0 fourth-quarter run, punctuated by the two Clippers big men finding shooters in the corners for back-to-back threes, sealed the deal.
L.A. took this win from a Rockets team all too eager to give it away, but it's not as though the Clippers are without their problems going forward.
Paul's status remains uncertain...besides the fact that we can confirm he was elated on the sidelines, per Arash Markazi of ESPNLosAngeles.com:
As long as he's out or at all limited, there'll be concerns about the Clippers' ability to score in this series. And Paul's absence will continue to force bench players into roles they haven't handled before.
Rivers, for example, was productive in Game 1, but nobody reasonably expects that to continue.
The other, broader issue is this: The Clippers didn't even play that well. They turned the ball over 23 times, suffered from plenty of wasted possessions and looked completely out of rhythm for long stretches. With Paul out, that's exactly how we expected them to look.
And until he returns and proves he's healthy, the potential for an L.A. collapse will still be there.
At the same time, it's difficult to imagine the Rockets recovering after an effort that prompted criticism like this from head coach Kevin McHale, per Mark Berman of Fox 26 and Adam Wexler of KPRC-TV in Houston:
This was a major blow to the Rockets' postseason credentials, especially because the only item on their resume in these playoffs is a series win over a disintegrating Dallas Mavericks team that couldn't defend anybody.
After a loss like this, some scary things come into play. Leadership issues could swallow up a Rockets squad with few proven locker-room-steadying voices. Harden could try to do too much on his own. Howard could pout about offensive touches as he has in the past.
There's a lot of series left, and if Game 1 revealed anything, it's that the surest playoff narratives sometimes don't materialize as we expect.
But the Rockets blew a chance to establish momentum with an easy win, and now that powerful force may have swung irreversibly in the Clippers' favor.
Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @gt_hughes.
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