A neat and tidy way to view the showcase first-round playoff series between the Los Angeles Clippers and San Antonio Spurs is that the Spurs enjoyed the benefit of the doubt.
Tony Parker nowhere close to his best? Eh, big deal — the Spurs are still the Spurs. They’ll figure out a way.
Tiago Splitter not at full strength? So what? Gregg Popovich is coaching that team, and two elite defenders — Tim Duncan and Kawhi Leonard — will get extended minutes. No problem. The Spurs will figure things out. They always do.
Manu Ginobili not owning a consistent shooting stroke, revealing the erosion of what was once a much more dependable game? No worries — Patty Mills and Cory Joseph have his back. It’s the SPURS, after all.
Turn to the Los Angeles Clippers, and you don’t get the same reactions to various limitations.
A lack of bench scoring for L.A.? Blake Griffin will cover that up… wait a minute, no he won’t, or at least, his efforts weren’t good enough against Oklahoma City a year ago.
Unreliable perimeter shooting from the role players or shooting specialists? Uh-oh — that’s not the centerpiece of Chris Paul’s game. Can CP3 truly mask his teammates’ deficiencies and give the Clippers what Matt Barnes sure has heck won’t provide? This doesn’t look good.
Doc Rivers versus Gregg Popovich? Is this a trick question? Is Austin Rivers going to step up and defend the good name of his father? Suuuuuuuuuuure…
The Spurs, not the Clippers, enjoyed the benefit of the doubt. This is what happens when a blockbuster first-round series pits a team with a long history of postseason achievement against an opponent without a single conference finals appearance in its long and snake-bitten history.
The Spurs have done it all many times over. The Clippers have done all of nothing many times over. Even with a reduced-speed version of Tony Parker and a not-fully-strong Splitter (whose immense value to the Spurs can easily get lost in the more obvious focus on Parker), most pundits were clearly willing to ride with the Spurs.
Friday night’s Game 3 showed why.
*
If you had told Doc Rivers that Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, and the aforementioned Mr. Parker would combine for 12 points; that only two Spurs would score more than 11 points; and that Game 2 sparkplug Patty Mills would score only 6 points, 12 below his total of 18 on Wednesday, the head coach of the Clippers probably would have been optimistic about his team’s chances. He likely would have asked how many points the Spurs’ two highest scorers would tally, but if that information was unavailable, he would have inwardly smiled.
Naturally, then, with the Spurs getting very little production from their aging trio of familiar pillars… they ran the Clippers out of the building. Game 3 ceased to be competitive entering the fourth quarter. The Clippers — one successful endgame possession (in Game 2) from taking a 2-0 series lead — are now very much on the ropes.
How essential is Game 4 on Sunday in San Antonio? Let’s put the matter this way: The number of people on this planet who believe in the Clippers’ ability to come back from a 3-1 deficit against the Spurs would equal the number of points J.J. Redick scored in the final 40 minutes of Game 3: zero.
The Clippers entered this series without the benefit of the doubt, and nothing that’s happened through three games has made any commentator more inclined to rethink the matter. Game 6 of this series would be played on the final night of April. Therefore, if the Clippers want to play at least one game in the month of May, they will almost certainly have to stand and deliver on Sunday.
Everyone will naturally look to Blake Griffin and Chris Paul — superstars who will have to play in accordance with the label — as the men centrally responsible for the Clippers’ path in this and every Rivers-era postseason. However, if one had to identify a non-superstar player who must be at his best in Game 4, the spotlight falls on Jamal Crawford.
*
Everyone knows that the Clippers have one of the worst benches in the NBA. It was and still is comically absurd that Hedo Turkoglu was getting fourth-quarter minutes in Game 2, and the move to bring Austin Rivers to Los Angeles seems a lot more about the future than the present tense. Glen Davis is not the player he was when he worked for Rivers in 2010 with the Boston Celtics. Spencer Hawes played all of eight garbage-time minutes in Game 3, underscoring the extent to which his stay with the Clippers has been a total bust.
Who’s left? Crawford… because all the alternatives are worse.
Yet, in Game 3, Crawford himself couldn’t have been much worse. He hit just 1 of 11 field goals and went 0-for-3 on 3-point shots. Crawford has always been a player whose game can be described as “here today, gone tomorrow.” That’s a rather intentional choice of words, too, because “here today, gone tomorrow” could describe the Clippers if they don’t figure out a way to beat the defending champions in Game 4.
Plenty of people doubted the Clippers coming into Game 3, following the gut punch that was Wednesday’s Game 2 loss in overtime. Coming into Game 4, every rational soul is doubting Los Angeles to a much greater extent. On a team stacked with players who are worth doubting, Crawford is the one reserve who could most realistically do something to alter the trajectory of his team’s season, not to mention the national perception of his ballclub.
If ever there was a time for Jamal Crawford to go on a tear and find the shooting zone which so often eludes him, it is Sunday. The Los Angeles Clippers, not given the benefit of the doubt against the San Antonio Spurs, have to grab a game no one is expecting them to win.
Everything about the history of this tormented franchise says the Clippers will fall short. For Jamal Crawford and his other bench brothers, the time to refute not just the critics, but also prevailing conventional wisdom, is at hand.
His shooting hand, to be even more precise.
