‘Playoff P’ leads Clippers to Game 5 win over Jazz, brink of history

As soon as Utah learned Wednesday that Clippers star Kawhi Leonard had strained his right knee, and would miss the fifth game of a second-round playoff series he had taken control of, it went to the film.

The Jazz reviewed how the Clippers’ style and substitution patterns had changed when Leonard sat. But more than strategy, the film revealed a toughness, an unwillingness to fold, that had served as a central theme of their season long before their first-round postseason comeback against Dallas. The Clippers were 11-9 without Leonard in the lineup, and 6-5 when he sat but Paul George played.

Before the Clippers’ own film session Wednesday morning, after Leonard jetted home to California, coach Tyronn Lue talked with his team. His message was that “nothing had changed.”

“We’ve played without a lot of guys, and guys have stepped up and we just found ways to win,” he said before tipoff. “Nothing’s any different tonight.”

The stakes, entering the fifth game of a deadlocked, 2-2 series, were certainly different. The setting, a madhouse of 18,007 fans donning black, promotional T-shirts, saw a wounded opponent and smelled blood. Even as Lue described himself as optimistic because the team still doesn’t know the injury’s severity, as it awaits test results, there was no denying the All-NBA void in a starting, small-ball lineup that included second-year wing Terance Mann in Leonard’s place.

“No one isolates at the nail better in the world than [Leonard],” Utah coach Quin Snyder said.

But the Clippers of Game 5 looked remarkably unchanged from the version that won the two previous games in blowouts, and the version of itself that had pushed back, time and again this season, in dire circumstances.

George had 37 points and 16 rebounds to lead the Clippers to a 119-111 victory that gives them a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series, with a potential clinching Game 6 on Friday night at Staples Center, which will be at capacity for the first time this season. Marcus Morris Sr. and Reggie Jackson contributed 25 and 22 points, respectively, while Mann had 13 points and two steals. Nicolas Batum made four steals and had nine points.

Seemingly pushed to a breaking point Wednesday by Utah’s early shooting and size, with Rudy Gobert’s 7-foot presence collecting offensive rebounds to rescue empty possessions, the Clippers left their timeouts clapping, firing threes, collecting steals and mustering the kind of performance that suggests this series isn’t yet over, even as the Clippers await word whether the season of their best player is.
What Leonard watched from afar were teammates ducking and dodging attempted knockout blows for the first 24 minutes. Utah’s Donovan Mitchell and Jordan Clarkson isolated Mann on defense and attacked him off the dribble on three consecutive possessions. If that didn’t work, they fired three-pointers. Utah made 10 in the first quarter — six from Bojan Bogdanovic — and 17 of its first 30 yet was unable to separate itself, leading by only five at halftime as the Clippers became the first team this postseason to record 10 steals in the first half.

Mitchell had an off night, making only six of 19 shots for 21 points. Bogdanovic finished with 32 points and Gobert scored 17 with 10 rebounds but no blocked shots.

Lue downplayed the extra burden Leonard’s absence placed on George.

“This is not on PG,” he said.

Yet for a player often skewered on social media — polarizing enough that it has taken only a few misses to become a Twitter trending topic — it unquestionably represented a stage on which to quiet critics for a night, if not fully change their minds.

George scored 22 of his points in his first 18 minutes, and when Utah used a 13-2 run to turn its one-point deficit into a 10-point lead in the second quarter in little over two minutes, George answered with a step-back three. Down eight three minutes later, George scored at the rim through the contact of Royce O’Neale, flexing his biceps while staring into a crowd that has shown a special distaste for him dating to a playoff series in 2018 when George played for Oklahoma City.

Clippers forward Paul George flexes his muscles after scoring against the Jazz during Game 5 on Wednesday night in Salt Lake City.

(Rick Bowmer / Associated Press)

When George made a technical free throw midway through the third quarter to build a 15-3 Clippers run and a seven-point lead, he smiled while trading words with fans dressed in the black, promotional T-shirt. Dribbling around his back to evade a double team at the top of the arc late in the third quarter, he found a wide-open Patrick Beverley, who nailed the shot for a six-point lead.

Utah missed all 10 of its three-pointers in the third, while the Clippers made five of their 11 to lead by nine entering the final 12 minutes.

Clippers-Jazz schedule

(Tim Hubbard / Los Angeles Times)