Oklahoma City Thunder guard Chris Paul was not sorry to shake the blame for his team’s 2-0 gap in a critical Game 3. He said he had to come up.
And that’s what he did on Saturday, putting the Thunder back in the first-round NBA playoff series with a 119-107 overtime victory over the Houston Rockets in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.
“I think we just want to fight,” Paul said. “We know how hard it is coming back from 3-0 down, so we wanted to fight last night and we did.”
Paul finished with 26 points on 11-of-20 shots, plus 6 rebounds and 5 assists in 41 minutes.
He made a run to put the Thunder in the fourth within three laps, and Houston guard Danuel House then stepped out of bounds to give OKC the ball back. A layup by Steven Adams cut it to 102-101 with less than 30 seconds to go into the fourth. Paul and the Rockets’ James Harden were put together before the ball was thrown into bounds. Harden made a free throw, but Houston turned it over.
Paul then put teammate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander up with a pin pass for goal 3 with 14.3 seconds left, and once the game went to overtime after split free throws by House, Paul went to work. With Harden fouled, Paul hit two 3s in a 75-second window, including a flying fadeaway from the wing when the shot clock expired, to sail Game 3.
“I think I had to play at a better pace,” Paul said. “Be aggressive. Take shots when they’re there. And be better defensive.”
Paul’s first two games were not so bad – at least statistically speaking – with him shooting an average of 17.0 points at 44.8%. In Game 2, however, he was a jarring minus-36, pointing to the defensive end as a focus and putting it on himself to solve these problems. In Game 3, he was a game-high plus-15.
“I gave up a lot of corner 3s, a lot of defensive assignments,” Paul said of what he wanted to correct from Game 2. “Besides the shots, I think I was a lot better defensively.”
As Paul has dominated this season, and restored himself as an All-Star and likely All-NBA selection, he has been in the club era as he led the league in scoring by a fairly wide margin. He has been one of the biggest shooters in close range games, working possessions to get in the midfield and manipulate defenses for fun.
“Chris is the master at manipulating pick-and-rolls,” said Thunder coach Billy Donovan. “If we get the floor in a way against them that are not well split on each other, it’s hard to play in pick-and-rolls because they change everything. Tonight I thought we had better spaces and could move a little freer. “
The Thunder built their record largely on winning close games, relying on the brilliance of Paul and the support of Gilgeous-Alexander and Dennis Schroder, who were also some of the league’s top scorers. In games 1 and 2, the Thunder in the last five minutes were not close enough for those chops to see. They struggled to sort out Houston’s exchange-everything defense schedule, but in Game 3 he corrected some of the problems, kept it close, and that’s where Paul took it over.
“What he’s done for the last probably 15 years,” Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni said of Paul’s closing shots. “He’s just a great player, a great clutch player and really thinks the game.”
D’Antoni was heated in the last minutes over a play with Paul, however. After Paul put the Rockets away, leaving 1:20 in overtime, he was called up for an offensive foul, which he appeared to catch Houston guard Ben McLemore under the belt with an elbow, when Paul de put ball on the floor to attack the court. The referee was unimpressed, and booked him for diving. The referee signaled a penalty for D’Antoni after 80 minutes, amid vocal protests from the visitors.
“Who knows?” D’Antoni said when asked why it was not viewed. “I asked the referee to just go over and check it out. He might have been right. I was not clear, but I know my husband was hit in a bad place with an elbow, so take a look. If you are right, you are right. That must be it. But it’s not like in the bubble, we have – there has to be entertainment somewhere, because what else do we have to do, but just go over and look at it, come back and play basketball? “
Said Harden: “I saw what happened. Every time that happens, it has to be checked, especially if it’s not like a lot of people. I know I did that, and it’s been checked before. That’s all we do. asked, is a review …. I do not know [if it was intentional], but it would have to be tested. Especially when someone is hit in their private area. I mean, we have to go nowhere, so it should be checked. I felt it was not, and I do not know why not. “
In Game 1, Harden caught Schroder with a knee under the belt, a play that was not really noticed by the Thunder and that also went without review.
Paul, who has long sought to shake up a low-profile reputation following a high school incident in which he beat NC State Guard Julius Hodge, said the play with McLemore was unintentional.
“I tried to get through him. It was incidental,” Paul said. “I know when I did it on purpose, that was in college. That was a long time ago. I checked on Ben, he said he was fine. I know Mike. He’s going crazy, he’s going to cry. and screaming. He got a tech. We’m going on. “
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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