Rowan Kavner 
Digital Content Coordinator
LOS ANGELES – All the momentum swung to the shorthanded, amped-up Clippers. Then, they had time to exhale.
“They were just up,” said head coach Doc Rivers. “Sometimes, you get up too much.”
The Clippers heard every criticism about the state of their shorthanded group and their slim chances without Chris Paul and Blake Griffin leading up to Game 5. And, for 24 minutes, they put everything they had on the floor, leading by as many as eight points in the second quarter and going to halftime with a five-point lead against the full-strength Trail Blazers.
“We were so hyped,” said Austin Rivers, who started for Paul and finished with 13 points. “That first half, we were so emotionally involved.”
But, with any adrenaline rush, there’s a crash.
A halftime break to cool down also turned the shots ice cold, and all the energy the Clippers used to fuel their attack in the first half seemed to seep away.
The Clippers didn’t score a point in the third quarter until Jeff Green went to the free-throw line with 6:24 remaining in the quarter. By then, their lead had disappeared.
“They turned their energy up beginning of the third, and we were exhausted,” said Doc Rivers. “I had to call two timeouts, you could just see it. That’s not conditioning, that was emotion.”
The Clippers still had some left in the tank, led by Green and Jamal Crawford, who responded to a nine-point Trail Blazers lead by scoring every point of a 9-0 run to tie the game heading to the fourth.
That’s when the tank reached empty.
“They heard the same thing that you guys said, you know, for 48 hours,” Doc Rivers said. “Hard game. Can they win? So, I liked the emotion, but they didn’t sustain it. Like, the pace we played at in the first half was terrific, we just couldn’t sustain the pace.”
Admittedly, Austin Rivers said it became hard to even get up and down the floor late in the game. He had played 30-plus minutes just once since the start of April before playing 37 minutes Wednesday.
Green also played 37 minutes, and Crawford was forced into 44 minutes of action.
“I was a little winded,” Crawford said, “but what can you do at this point? You have to find a way.”
The Clippers nearly did, until exhaustion got the best of them in Game 5, allowing Portland to score 37 points in the fourth quarter to break a tie and run away with a 3-2 lead. Crawford said the key going forward is calming themselves down and staying in the moment.
“Not being too jacked up,” he said.
They have one more chance to get it right Friday in Game 6 if they want to stay alive and play Game 7 back at home, and that’s what Austin Rivers expects to happen with a second straight game playing with a new-look group.
“I think now that we know what to expect, you’ll see a much better game for a full game,” Austin Rivers said. “We win Game 6, it’s right back to our momentum…We’re still focused and ready to go.”