Stunning Comeback By Houston Rockets Has Los Angeles Clippers Scratching Their Heads
A stunning comeback by the Houston Rockets in Game 6 in Los Angeles has got the Los Angeles Clippers on the ropes.
How stunning was their stunning comeback? According to Syracuse.com, the Clippers had a 19-point lead, the momentum, and the crowd behind them. The Clippers seemed to forget one thing: They also had about 15 minutes of game time left.
The Rockets, however, remembered it all too well. Before this game, the Rockets were 0-49 in playoff games when they are behind by 10 points or more. After the last 15 minutes, the Rockets had won by 12, were going home for Game 7, and had silenced a very pro-Clippers crowd.
That’s a stunning comeback.
Dwight Howard led the Rockets’ stunning comeback, scoring 20 points and grabbing 21 rebounds, even with being in foul trouble early in the game. James Harden, the Rocket’s MV candidate, sat out all but the last minute of the fourth quarter, still suffering from flu symptoms. Reserves Josh Smith and Corey Brewer supplied plenty of spark, hitting timely three-pointers to push the Rockets from 19 behind to winning by 12. Smith scored 14 of his 19 points in the fourth quarter.
“We kept saying, ‘We’re not going to quit,'” said Howard. “We kept believing. We never gave up on each other.”
And the Clippers? They knew their role in this stunning comeback.
“We took our foot off the gas, stopped defending, a lot of things,” said Blake Griffin, who finished with 28 points yet missed all five of his shots in the fourth quarter.
The Clippers were four of 22 from the field in the fourth quarter and outscored 45-10 in the final quarter.
“We were trying to run the clock out and we stopped playing,” Clippers coach Doc Rivers said. “We gave this one away.”
Many NBA fans and former players were just as taken aback by this stunning comeback as the 19,217 fans at the sold-out Staples Center, according to Uproxx. The once-raucous crowd grew more and more quiet with each Rockets basket, a dagger in the hopes of the Clippers fans wanting to get to the NBA Western Conference Finals for the first time ever.
Many east coast NBA fans had coronated Chris Paul and the Clippers as the first to make it to the Western Conference Finals, only to wake up and see either the Rockets’ stunning comeback or the Clippers sudden discombobulation. The Clippers shot a miserable 18.9 percent from the floor in the fourth quarter and very few free throws.
The problem for the Clippers now: How do they pull themselves back up after suffering such a stunning comeback? They now go back to Houston for Game 7 of this suddenly tied series. Can they find the resolve to put Game 6 behind and play their game and advance to the Western Conference Finals? Do the Rockets have one more stunning comeback in them?
[Image courtesy of Space City Scoop]
