This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Forget the years of heartbreak, the playoff collapses, the freak injuries.
Doc Rivers doesn't believe in a Clippers curse. The longtime coach does, however, put his faith in the basketball gods, and he believes in his superstar point guard.
And after enduring so many playoff letdowns, Chris Paul is playing like a man on a mission.
"He's stubborn in a very, very positive way," Rivers said. "All the great ones have that in them. They are stubborn enough, like they aren't going to lose."
Through the first three games of this opening-round series between Utah and Los Angeles, Paul has averaged 26.7 points, 10.3 assists and 5.3 rebounds. The Clippers hold a 2-1 lead over the Jazz as the series turns to Game 4 on Sunday night in Salt Lake City, and they can thank Paul for that.
And if L.A. plans to get past the Jazz despite losing forward Blake Griffin to a toe injury, Paul is the man capable of getting the job done. In Game 2 in Los Angeles, the Clipper point guard took over for a critical stretch to snuff out the threat of a Utah comeback. In Game 3, with Griffin out of the game and the momentum favoring the Jazz, Paul took over.
Guard Jamal Crawford called it one of the best performances he had ever seen.
"It's been four years of witnessing greatness with him," Clippers guard J.J. Redick said afterward. "He always seems to rise to the occasion, too, in big games. He was spectacular tonight, especially in the second half. He willed us into winning that game."
The Clippers went to their point guard in the high pick-and-roll repeatedly in the fourth quarter, and Paul delivered on every possession he had to, finishing with a team-high 34 points in the victory.
"There's no way that I can respect Chris Paul more than I do," Jazz coach Quin Snyder said at the start of the series. "… He just does whatever he has to do to help his team win. I'm painfully aware of that at some points."
Paul has torched the Jazz, and especially in the second halves of the series' first three games. He is averaging 19.3 points after halftime, with 10.7 of them coming in the fourth quarter.
"Whether it's practice, whether it's playing chess with my son, anything like that, it's competition," Paul said. "That's what I, what we as a team, have to thrive on."
Even before they had lost Griffin to injury, the pressure on Paul was immense. It had to be to match the magnitude of the disappointment.
"I understand where our team has been in the past and where I've been in the past," Paul said.
For every All-Star appearance and personal accolade Paul has achieved, there has been a heartbreak to match. The letdowns have been so numerous, Paul couldn't pick one that stands out as the most frustrating.
"All of them," he said last week as his team prepared for its first-round series with the Utah Jazz. "All of them. All of them."
The Clippers have trudged off the floor as their opponents have danced in confetti. They have pushed teams to the brink, only to collapse in crunch time. Last season, Paul's broken finger doomed them to a first-round exit.
Now, the Clippers have lost Griffin for the rest of the playoffs to a toe injury. Paul was emotional on Saturday as he spoke about Griffin.
"Going through as much as me and big fella have been together, it's always tough," he said.
But that doesn't change the goals for Paul and a Clippers team that has suffered so many postseason collapses, and has never been able to advance beyond the second round.
"We know we got a job to do," Paul said.
Twitter: @aaronfalk —
Series schedule
L.A. Clippers 2, Utah 1
Game 1 • Jazz, 97-95
Game 2 • Clippers, 99-91
Game 3 • Clippers, 111-106
Sunday • at Utah, 7 p.m.
Tuesday • at L.A., 8:30 p.m.
x-Friday • at Utah, TBA
x-April 30 • at L.A., TBA
x-if necessary