Kawhi, PG, And The Clippers Steamrolled The Jazz In Game 4 To Even The Series At 2-2

After picking up a much needed win in a blowout in Game 3, the Clippers entered Game 4 looking to even things up going back to Utah against the Jazz. It didn’t take long for them to take control on Monday night, continuing their dominance over the Jazz, taking a 30-13 first quarter lead and extending that to as many as 28 (50-22) midway through the half.

Once again, George and Leonard were the catalysts for the Clippers, attacking downhill and putting on a shot-making clinic early.

Marcus Morris also got it rolling in the first half, hitting on his first five three-point attempts and scoring 24 points on the night to provide a nice lift as the defense tried to collapse on Leonard and George.

The highlight of the half came courtesy of Leonard, who punched home a massive dunk on Derrick Favors, causing an eruption from the L.A. bench and even managed to stop Joel Embiid in his tracks as he watched during his postgame presser in Atlanta.

In the third quarter, the Jazz made runs to close the gap to as few as 14 on a few occasions, as Donovan Mitchell put forth, by far, the best effort of any of the Jazz on the offensive end, scoring 30 for the sixth straight game (37 points, five assists, and five rebounds).

However, Utah just couldn’t consistently get stops on the other end to make things really interesting and continued to run into the resistance of a great L.A. defense, led by Leonard.

The Jazz saw the Clippers extend their lead back to 21 going into the fourth quarter, negating almost all of their efforts in the third, punctuated by a buzzer-beating tip-in from Ivica Zubac.

The first half of fourth quarter came and went without a real run from the Jazz, who just couldn’t find consistent offense and had no answers on the defensive end for the Clippers who could get a good look seemingly at will. However, Kawhi bumped knees with Joe Ingles in the mid-fourth and eventually left the game and did not return as Utah steadily closed the gap, getting it to 10 points with two minutes to play.

However, Paul George (31 points, nine rebounds, four assists) was doing enough to keep the Jazz at bay without Leonard (31 points and seven rebounds), and then put the game on ice with free throws down the stretch as the Clippers extended their advantage out to 118-104.

For Utah, they can lean on a massively improved performance from the second half as evidence that they are more than capable of hanging with the Clippers and they just have to figure out how to get off to better starts. For L.A., confidence has to be high particularly with Kawhi saying “nah, I’m good” when asked if there were any concerns going forward about his knee, and their two stars continue to lead the way, scoring 20 points each in the first 11 games of the playoffs, becoming just the third pair of teammates in league history to reach such a mark.