Rowan Kavner
OAKLAND – It takes something legitimate for Chris Paul to miss the final play in Golden State with his team trailing by four points with the ball and 13 seconds remaining.
Paul strained his groin late in the loss, while Blake Griffin banged his knee earlier in the night one game after rolling his ankle, though neither Paul nor Griffin’s conditions appear initially to be anything that’ll keep them out.
“I took a knee to the knee,” Griffin said. “Just banged knees – nothing crazy, nothing serious. I’ve just got to manage the swelling.”
As for Paul, he said the injury happened somewhere “down the stretch” and he “without question” expects to play in Saturday’s game.
“I’ll be good,” Paul said. “Go home, let my kids take care of me. I’ll be all right.”
Next Game: 11/07
Paul’s no stranger to playing through pain, straining his hamstring against the Spurs in Game 7 of the first round only to return and hit the game winner to send the Clippers to the second round. Paul said if he were in the playoffs, he probably would’ve returned, though the choice to sit out wasn’t his.
“The trainer told me, and Chris was trying to get on the floor, and I dragged him back,” Rivers said. “You could see he was not happy.”
Paul said it was “real tough” not being out there for the Clippers’ final play. Rivers drew up the play, but after speaking to head athletic trainer Jasen Powell, the decision was made to keep Paul out.
“His groin was hurting, and I just wasn’t going to put him back out there,” Rivers said. “I took him out, but that’s another great lesson for our team. We took him out after we drew up a play, and it was the last second that Chris told me he couldn’t go out, and everybody should know the play, not just the guy with the ball. We didn’t know the play.”
Rivalry Building
Doc Rivers has never been one for “measuring stick” games during the regular season.
He doesn’t like to put too much into any one singular game, but even he acknowledges there’s something a little extra these days between the Clippers and Warriors.
“We want to beat them, they want to beat us,” Rivers said. “It’s always something more because they’re the world champions and we want to be that and they don’t want us to be. It’s always a little bit more to the game.”
That’s something Rivers didn’t realize until he became head coach of the Clippers in 2013.
“At that time, neither team had won a playoff series,” Rivers said. “Now, it’s becoming (a rivalry) because they’re the world champions. They really made it by winning it, to me.”
Rivers saw how both teams react and, many times, overreact. He said he could see it was more than normal.
“You can call it what you want – rivalry, testy, whatever, but it’s something,” Rivers said.
