LOS ANGELES - The buzzer had not sounded. There were still 2.0 seconds left, but the Golden State Warriors needed more than one basket, so Doc Rivers finally let loose. The Clippers' coach stood near midcourt and shook his fists. He waved his arms. He smiled.
As had happened all week, Rivers spoke for his players, his organization and their fans. This time, though, it was with his actions, not his words.
When the Clippers' 126-121 victory over the Warriors was complete, sealing a tough first-round Western Conference series victory in a tense seven games, it was an occasion for everyone to let loose. It was a cathartic moment.
This win was not secured in a vacuum, but while being drawn into a national news story after the Clippers' owner, Donald Sterling, was heard on an audio recording making racist remarks, which struck deeply at the core of a league whose players are overwhelmingly African-American.
'This was a hard week,' Rivers said. 'Was it a week? It feels like two months. It's been hard. So it was for me, too. I needed to be able to smile and laugh and cheer and be proud of something, and I was very proud of my players.'
Though N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver had banned Sterling for life on Tuesday, and the owners took steps Thursday that they hope will force him to sell the team, the Clippers had not quite regained their balance. The players were so out of sorts that even a light practice Friday afternoon was cut short after 30 minutes because the players were so lethargic.
Surviving a seven-game series often steels the winner for a championship run. Five of the last six N.B.A. champions have won a seven-game series on the way to a title, including Miami, which took the Eastern Conference championship series to the limit on the way to back-to-back titles.
For the Clippers, the series win should allow for a deep breath, too.
They have a quick turnaround, beginning their conference semifinal series Monday night at Oklahoma City, which won another of the five seven-game series that were played in the first round. The Clippers have a noon flight Sunday, but the hospitality of Blake Griffin's parents - his mother's strawberry cake has been requested - and moving further from the Sterling scandal could not hurt.
'There's not really a team that's gone through this,' Griffin said. 'I remember Saturday morning when everything hit, and you could see certain guys that were really emotional about the situation. This was the first day, and it got a lot bigger. It was obviously a huge thing, and it grew and grew and grew with each day, or each hour honestly. It wore on guys - just the mental strength we had was unbelievable.'
That fortitude was severly tested Saturday. Golden State has had its own travails, though they did not garner national attention. The Warriors had two assistant coaches removed from the team - Brian Scalabrine reportedly for insubordination, and Darren Erman for surreptitiously recording conversations of players and coaches. That helped fuel speculation of the job status of Coach Mark Jackson. Then on the eve of the playoffs, center Andrew Bogut was lost with a broken rib.
But the Warriors' stole the series opener, and behind their sweet shooting guards, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, and the blossoming Draymond Green, they surged to a 12-point second quarter lead on Saturday. The Clippers seized the lead back in the third, and the stage was set for a tense finish.
As Rivers pointed out Friday, these high-stakes games can turn on the smallest details.
When the Celtics beat the LeBron James-led Cavaliers in the seventh game of the Eastern Conference finals on the way to the 2008 title, the game pivoted with a minute left when Paul Pierce took advantage of a lazy box out by James to grab a jump ball. On Saturday night, the pivotal play was DeAndre Jordan's block of Curry's floater. It ignited a fast break that Griffin finished with an alley-oop from J.J. Redick, putting the Clippers ahead, 112-109, with 1:54 to play. Jordan pushed the lead to 5 when he dunked Paul's missed jumper. Jordan had another dunk, on an alley-oop pass from Griffin, which put the lead back to 120-115 with 22.3 seconds left.
When Matt Barnes entered the locker room after the game, he thanked his teammates for trusting each other. Trust has been a byword for the Clippers this season, and nowhere was it more evident in the contributions of Jordan. In the last two years, Jordan was rarely on the court during key moments because his poor free-throw shooting and attention span did not allow him to gain the confidence of the then-coach Vinny Del Negro.
Jordan was shut out in Game 4, but had a career-high 25 points in the Game 5 victory, and had 15 points and 18 rebounds on Saturday, without having a play run for him the entire series.
'The biggest thing with our team right now is trust,' Chris Paul said. 'Obviously, we go back and forth at times, where it doesn't' seem like we do. But Doc tells us all the time, if we trust we'll find a way to win.'
As he sat at the podium late Saturday night, Paul said the past week had been a blur. He also had duties as the president of the players' union, though others, like Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, helped take those duties off his plate. Paul said he could hardly recall any of the details of the last two weeks. When the series began, it was expected to be contentious because of several skirmishes between the teams over the last two seasons. Their beef even extended to the pregame chapel, when the Clippers scheduled a separate time earlier this season.
But the Sterling controversy transformed everything. In a show of solidarity, the Warriors joined the Clippers by wearing black socks, and were prepared to boycott games if they were not satisfied with how the league would discipline Sterling. When the series ended, before a crowd that was as relieved as it was exhilarated, there were no harsh words between the teams, only handshakes, hugs and words of respect.
A difficult opponent was not all the Clippers had survived, and they were ready to move on.
Posted by Unknown on Sunday, May 4, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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