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Los Angeles • In Utah's 108-95 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers, DeAndre Jordan grabbed 15 rebounds. Blake Griffin scored 15 points and grabbed six rebounds. Chris Paul went 5 of 18 from the floor en route to 14 points.
The moral of this story? The Jazz may have gotten a win, if only they could've controlled Jamal Crawford, and the Clippers bench.
One of the best sixth men in NBA history, Crawford certainly proved why on Saturday. The veteran scored 28 points, shooting 8 of 12 from the field and hitting all nine of his free throws. He took over against the Jazz, making the difficult seem easy.
"Jamal is one of those guys where it doesn't matter whether it's good defense or bad defense," Utah point guard George Hill said. "He's going to make tough shots. That's what he's been doing his whole career. I still feel like he had a lot of tough looks. He's just a great shot maker, especially with a hand in his face."
Crawford was good in the first half. He was truly special in the fourth quarter, scoring 17 of those points. The demoralizing thing: The Clippers didn't run a lot of offensive sets when Crawford was in the game.
Time and again, Los Angeles isolated Crawford against Jazz defenders, and he would use an array of crossovers and hesitations to either splash jumpers from the perimeter or get to the basket and score at the rim.
Crawford was unstoppable when it mattered. And the fact that Utah controlled the Clippers' normal big three made Crawford's performance all the more important.
"I can tell by the way he is moving," Paul said. "Whenever he gets going like that, I'm the first one to jump off the bench. When he is moving like that, we always say he has his dancing shoes on. So when he gets going like that, it's trouble for the other team."
The Clipper bench in general was a pain for the Jazz all night. In total, Los Angeles' bench scored 56 points, while the Jazz bench countered with 32. Austin Rivers and Marreese Speights both scored 11 points. Even Paul Pierce, who has been out of the rotation until recently, hit a big jumper at the end of the third quarter.
"It was fun out there, the way our second unit played," Speights said. "We were able to spread the court and shoot the ball and make plays. It was a lot of fun today."
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