PHOENIX — For 36 minutes Sunday, Russell Westbrook struggled mightily to make a shot.
By thwarting Phoenix’s last shot, the Clippers’ midseason addition more than made up for it.
Amid a three-of-19 shooting night, Westbrook never hesitated when Kevin Durant’s long-armed defense denied an easy entry pass to Kawhi Leonard with 17 seconds left, backing down Phoenix’s Devin Booker in the post before drawing a foul with 17 seconds to play. Walking to the free-throw line for the first time on the night, he made both to push the Clippers’ lead to 111-108.
Needing one last stop, the Clippers defended with Westbrook, Leonard, Eric Gordon, Terance Mann and Nicolas Batum. Only Westbrook factored into the possession.
Booker sought an isolation against him, then tried to drive to his left — only to be stripped of the ball by Westbrook, who threw it off Booker while leaping out of bouncs to give the Clippers possession. The threat was ended, the game stolen, a 1-0 series lead seized — a 115-110 Clippers victory.
Coach Tyronn Lue told Westbrook, who scored nine points, during the game not to be frustrated by his shooting.
“You bring us way more than scoring the basketball,” Lue had said. Westbrook, he added, was “phenomenal.”
Kawhi Leonard provided the necessary scoring punch, with 38 points in 42 minutes. This heavy of a workload, Lue said, was why the Clippers had managed his minutes so carefully throughout the season.
“It’s one win,” Lue said, “but I like what we did tonight.”
Lue has never been one to overreact to series openers, which explains why they’d entered 0-3 in them under Lue, yet had won two playoff series. He told the Times in early April that the uncertainty surrounding what an opponent will run leaves him to “kind of throw it out the window because you don’t know what they’re trying to do.”
Entering Sunday without All-Star Paul George, who is considered a longshot to appear during the first round while he rehabs a sprained right knee, had changed those calculations, he acknowledged.
“We don’t have a lot of margin for error so it’s not really a feel-out game for us,” Lue said before tipoff.
It was exceptionally tight. The Suns made 39 shots, the Clippers 41. The Clippers made four more three-pointers, the Suns made three more free throws.
Kevin Durant scored 27 points, but his best work in the first quarter came, unexpectedly, on defense. Purposefully sagging off of Westbrook, he drew a pair of missed jump shots early in the shot clock — exactly the kind of shots Westbrook had otherwise studiously avoided since joining the Clippers. Westbrook missed his first seven shots, and after the last walked back on defense as Phoenix ran back for a dunk.
Yet against a rotation of defenders including Westbrook, Gordon and Nicolas Batum, Durant was not the scouting report-destroying force many feared after his superlative shooting season. Even at nearly 7 feet tall, he missed his first five shots and didn’t see an easy, open look until midway through the second quarter while playing against a physicality the Clippers vowed would be critical to stay in the series. Westbrook, who learned all of Durant’s offensive tics as Oklahoma City teammates for eight seasons, blocked one shot from behind and poked away his dribble.
“I loved our physicality,” Lue said.
The dam could not hold forever. Scoreless during his first 13 minutes, Durant scored 17 in his final nine of the first half, seeming to find the answers as the game went on. Keeping both Durant and Devin Booker in during the half’s final minutes could have been a gamble, as both had two fouls, with Booker narrowly avoiding a third. It paid off: When the two combined to score 17 of Phoenix’s last 19 points before halftime, the Clippers’ lead had dwindled from 16 to five.
That advantage was gone just seven minutes later. Westbrook’s shooting struggles continued but were no outlier as the Clippers went four minutes without scoring, a drought made more damaging by Phoenix scoring 15 unanswered points to lead 77-68. When Phoenix couldn’t seize control, mustering just four points in the quarter’s final four minutes, the Clippers stayed calm and methodically pulled even behind a lineup of Leonard and four reserves to enter the fourth quarter tied.
With Leonard having already played 34 minutes, Lue took a risk with less than 10 minutes to play in regulation by sitting him for a breather and replacing him with Westbrook, after the Clippers had outscored Phoenix by 10 in the six minutes since the starting point guard had gone to the bench. Yet when Leonard returned after two minutes, the Clippers’ lead had held steady at three.
Westbrook stayed in not because his offense ever recovered, but because he was “too good defensively,” plus the five rebounds he corralled in the fourth quarter, including one he quickly transferred to Leonard for a three-pointer with two minutes to play that pushed their lead to four.
It marked the Clippers’ first three-pointer of the fourth quarter. It would not be their last. Gordon’s 27-foot heave late in the shot clock pushed their lead to 109-103 with 93 seconds to play, but the margin would not hold. It was Westbrook who finally sealed it.
