Clippers triumph with a fourth quarter comeback
The Grizzlies lost to the Los Angeles Clippers Sunday night.
The Clippers managed to triumph over the Memphis Grizzlies 99-98 in the opening game of the Western Conference series, despite previously being down 21 points. “Unfortunately, that’s how we play,” Chris Paul said. “We get killed in the first three quarters, and in the fourth quarter, we like to try to stand up for ourselves, and we found a way to win tonight.”
Paul finished with 14 points including a pair of free throws with 23.7 seconds left in the game. Nick Young scored 19 points, Blake Griffin had 17 and Caron Butler 12 before leaving the game due to a broken left hand.
Rudy Gay finished with 19 for Memphis. Mike Conley and O.J. Mayo had 17, and Marc Gasol scored 14.
The Grizzlies had a 20 point lead in the first quarters and were up by 27 twice in the third. As the Clippers got going in the fourth, the Grizzlies looked lost. “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.”
“We turned something that we worked so hard for – home-court advantage – to an ugly loss in Game one,” said O.J. Mayo. “We’ve got to come back Game two with the attitude we can’t quit.”
Game two is Wednesday night.
