Clippers vs. Cavs Game Recap: Comeback of the season

The LA Clippers pulled off one of their best wins of the season with a 120-118 victory over the visiting Cleveland Cavaliers.

Summary

By this point, Clippers fans are well-accustomed to the team’s lackadaisical starts during Sunday matinee games. But this season, at least as of late, it’s been home games in general that the Clippers have been struggling with.

Sunday’s game against the Cavs looked like it was going to follow the same script. The Clippers found themselves down 80-59 by halftime. As it turned out, all they needed was a heightened defense along with a little Paul George heroics.

The Clippers stifled the Cavaliers offense while riding a hot hand from George who scored 27 of his 39 points in the second half. Following the game, Clippers head coach Tyronn Lue stated that he challenged the team at halftime to come out with a better defensive effort.

“In the first half they just ran wherever they wanted to go. It was our point of attack defense one-on-one to straight line drives and blow-bys with no resistance, no physicality,” Lue said. “We challenged our guys at halftime like we know we can score the basketball but can we get stops, can we pick our physicality up, can we guard our man one-on-one.”

The Clippers held the Cavaliers to only 38 points in the second half. Caris LeVert and Max Strus, who killed the Clippers in the first half with 18 points each, scored only a combined two points in the second half on 1-12 shooting.

And it was George who put the Clippers on his back, especially in the fourth quarter. He scored 23 points in the final period while shooting 6-10 from the field, 2-4 from three-point range and 9-9 from the free-throw line.

He also came up with the biggest shot of the game, a jumper with 7.1 seconds left to put the Clippers ahead. He followed that up with a game-saving block on a Darius Garland drive.

After the game, George spoke about being in the flow of the game and trusting his teammates while trusting his own offense.

“I thought I had some shots I didn’t trust. I thought I rushed some shots and took some shots that I could have let the play develop or rushed some shots. I was kind of mindful of those,” George said. “At that point, I was just trying to read the game and get the best shot possible in those possessions.”

Notes:
-James Harden didn’t play the entire fourth quarter. Lue opted to go with his bench of Russell Westbrook, Norman Powell, Amir Coffey and Mason Plumlee for the majority of the fourth. Ultimately, Plumlee was subbed out for Terance Mann. Following the game, Lue said that Harden was fine. In any case, the move paid off as the bench group got the team back in the game.