Unlike the last two games, game three resulted in a beat down. San Antonio wins comfortably 100-73. Kawhi Leonard put in a career high 32 points and hit three balls from deep. Boris Diaw was the second leading scorer with 15. Los Angeles never really stood a chance when their star players put up a dud performance like the one today, or maybe it was Leonard winning his Defensive Player Of The Year award earlier in the night and it rubbed off on the team. The Clippers did shoot an unusual 34 percent from the field and Chris Paul had seven points four assists and six turnovers. Blake Griffin kind of showed up, he had a double double with 14 points and 10 boards.
Just like the start of game two the Spurs got a lot of offense from one player to help them win the first quarter. This game they rode Leonard who scored 10 in the opening period as the Spurs outscored the Clippers in the first period 25-16. Los Angeles went two three minute stretches without scoring during that period as well.
Spurs continued to outplay the Clippers during the second period as Matt Bonner and Patty Mills got the quarter started with back to back three balls. Yet as lopsided as the game was looking the Clippers managed to weather the storm pretty well. They were surprisingly able to outscore the Spurs by one that quarter when Paul put up a sorry five points and four turnovers in the first half. Leonard ended the quarter with 16 points and an arena shaking oop courtesy of Danny Green.
Leonard continued his abuse on the Clippers once the third quarter arrived.
JJ Reddick managed to stay on his feet when playing defense on Leonard this time around but the result was still the same.
Los Angeles could only muster up 11 points, that’s not enough to outscore Leonard (13 points in the quarter) or San Antonio as a whole (24 points). It looked like the Clippers were going to get it going in the fourth when Jamal Crawford hit a three, his first bucket of the game. Then the Spurs put up eight consecutive points. No matter how hard they tried the Clippers couldn’t buy a bucket. With the Clippers shooting 30 percent from the field, Doc Rivers put in Spencer Hawes and Lester Hudson hoping they could generate some offense.
Spencer Hawes is not making a good case for playing time. Blowing open layups with his team down 35 points. — Robert H (@bandwagonknick) April 25, 2015
So much for that….
A lot of analysts say that the Clippers playing a lot of minutes the first two games would catch up with them. We’ll see if that’s the case because it’s definitely looking like a factor after the drop off from the first two games until today. Clippers must be looking at Game 4 like a must win scenario because nobody wants to be down to a Popovich team 3-1.
Game 4 of Clippers-Spurs will be on Sunday at 3:30 PM EST on ABC.
