PORTLAND, Ore. -- Chris Paul knew it was bad.
As he tried to defend a driving Gerald Henderson in the third quarter of Monday night’s game against the Portland Trail Blazers, he got his right middle finger stuck in the back of Henderson’s jersey and heard a snap. It was a kind of snap the Los Angeles Clippers point guard had never heard before, followed by a pain he had never felt before in either hand.
Paul tried to shake his right hand as he walked to the Clippers' bench, but he knew this wasn’t the kind of injury he would be able to shake off. When Clippers head athletic trainer Jasen Powell told him what the injury likely was, Paul stood up, looked down at his right hand, yelled and kicked a seat cushion on the floor as he walked back to the locker room.
Paul's father, Charles, and his brother, C.J., were seated on the baseline next to the bench and knew instantly something was wrong. The last time they had seen Chris leave the court like that was in 2010, when he suffered a torn meniscus in his left knee. “He knew,” C.J. said. “He knew.”
Shortly after coach Doc Rivers walked out of the Clippers' locker room to address the media, Paul, with his right hand in a cast and his right arm in a sling, left the arena with his family. His brother showed him a clip of the play, yet it still didn’t seem real to Paul. He had never suffered an injury to his shooting hand that he could remember, and it happened now? His season was effectively ended on such a seemingly routine play?
Paul will be re-evaluated Tuesday in Los Angeles, but team sources indicate surgery will likely be needed and that the normal recovery time for the injury is anywhere from three to six weeks.
“It obviously doesn’t look very good for him,” Rivers said after the game, which the Trail Blazers won 98-84 to even the best-of-seven, first-round playoff series at 2-2.
To make matters worse, Clippers forward Blake Griffin suffered a left quadriceps injury shortly after Paul’s injury in the third quarter and was limping noticeably before being taken out for the game's final 5 minutes, 48 seconds.
“It doesn’t look great for him, either,” Rivers said when asked about Griffin, before adding there is a “50-50” chance Griffin will play in Game 5 in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
Before Paul left the locker room, Clippers players and coaches surrounded him in the trainer’s room.
“They love their teammates and Chris is taking this very hard,” Rivers said. “He’s worked all year to get back to the playoffs, and for this to happen to him, he’s a very emotional guy. … Everybody, the whole team is in a training room and it’s nice in that way, but the reality is that you don’t have Chris Paul.”
Playing without Paul would be hard enough for the Clippers, but the possibility of being without both Paul and Griffin leaves them in a nearly hopeless position with the series now even. After the game, Griffin talked to Paul and tried his best to offer some encouragement, but knew anything he could say didn’t mean much in the moment.
“He was clearly disappointed and upset, but there’s nothing you can do,” Griffin said. “You try to tell a guy like that that, ‘It’s OK, we got you,’ and, ‘It’s going to be OK,' but he’s a competitor and wants to play, so it’s tough. It’s not easy dealing with injuries, especially this time of year. As his teammates we’ll always have his back and go from there.”
Before Monday’s game, the story of the day was Stephen Curry's sprained right MCL, which could sideline the Golden State Warriors star two weeks. The talk was not just that Curry was out, but that perhaps if the Clippers could take care of the Blazers early, they would be able to face a Warriors team without Curry in the second round.
“It’s pretty easy for me not do that math,” Rivers said. “We have Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum in front of us right now, so that math is easy for me. I’m looking at this series. I don’t look too far ahead. I think that would be foolish thing to do.”
Rivers had every right to be more concerned with Lillard and McCollum than the prospect of playing the Warriors without Curry even before his team’s injuries. The Clippers looked like a disinterested, disjointed and disorganized bunch for much of Monday’s game before Paul was sidelined. Despite shooting 35.7 percent in the first half and committing 12 turnovers, the Blazers controlled the tempo of the game and never trailed. Outside of Paul, the Clippers were essentially invisible. Paul scored the team’s first 12 points and none of his teammates scored a field goal in the game until a DeAndre Jordan dunk with 1 minute, 43 seconds left in the first quarter.
“I think we came out and it was obvious that we weren’t going to go away,” Lillard said. “What we did last game; we didn’t want it to seem like, ‘Oh, they can do it for one game, fight for one game.’ We came out and did the things that we did last game at an even higher level.”
The Clippers have been in this situation before. After taking a 2-0 lead in their first-round series against the Memphis Grizzlies in 2013, the Clippers flew to Memphis and, with a chance to put a stranglehold on the series, lost Game 3. Before taking the court for Game 4, it was announced that Russell Westbrook would be out indefinitely with a torn meniscus in his right knee. The Clippers weren’t just two wins away from moving on to the second round now; they were two wins away from playing a short-handed Oklahoma City Thunder team in the second round.
In the end, it didn’t matter. The Clippers would go onto lose the next three games, essentially getting swept after winning the first two. The turning point in the series came when Griffin injured his ankle during a full-court scrimmage. The Grizzlies went on to beat the Westbrook-less Thunder in five games before losing to the San Antonio Spurs in the Western Conference finals. The Clippers, meanwhile, fired Vinny Del Negro and brought in Rivers.
Without Paul, or even without Griffin, Rivers wasn't in the mood to concede with the series tied and two of the next three potential games in Los Angeles.
“We’re going home. All they’ve done is win two games at home just like we won two games at home," he said. “We’ve been in adverse situations all year with guys out, but guys have come through and I expect us to do that at our place.”