LOS ANGELES (AP) The young Utah Jazz have grown up quickly.
Gordon Hayward scored 26 points as the Jazz eliminated the Los Angeles Clippers on Sunday with a 104-91 victory, closing out the first-round series 4-3 to earn the franchise’s first postseason victory since 2010.
”We’ve been through some pretty hard downs,” said Hayward, a seventh-year veteran. ”It definitely feels really good to go from 25 wins to where we were this year making the playoffs, winning a series.”
In the most closely contested series of the first round – and the only to go seven games – the Clippers came up strangely flat with their season on the line. J.J. Redick didn’t hit his first 3-pointer until the game’s final 3 + minutes, drawing the Clippers within eight.
”Late, when we did start scoring, we couldn’t get stops,” said Chris Paul, who had 13 points for the Clippers.
He couldn’t muster any of his fourth-quarter magic, either. Paul went scoreless with three assists in the period after tweaking an ankle in the third.
”We made it difficult for Chris Paul to get in the lane, get his little pullup jump shot,” Hayward said. ”Guys on the weak side were rotated, making them make the extra pass and make some other guys try to create for them.”
In the fourth, the Jazz were well in command, ahead by 17 points and hardly feeling pressured by foul trouble for Rudy Gobert and Derrick Favors, who both fouled out after scoring 17 points apiece.
”I was struggling a lot this season with injuries and my teammates had to hold it down for me,” Favors said. ”I felt like I owed them, especially in this game.”
The first six games between the fourth-seeded Clippers and No. 5 Utah were decided by eight points or less with Los Angeles outscoring Utah 98.8 points to 98.0 points. The teams had identical 51-31 records in the regular season.
But this one was all Utah in the second half.
The Jazz opened the third on a 23-9 run, extending their lead to 69-48 – largest in the series. Boris Diaw had eight points, Hayward added six and George Hill four as the Jazz had three three-point plays.
The Clippers got bogged down with a shot-clock turnover, a delay of game warning and Redick’s airball on a 3-point attempt while the home crowd went silent.
This time, the Jazz didn’t need the big-shot heroics of Joe Johnson or the presence of Gobert.
The Clippers, whose only lead was one point minutes into the game, shot 44 percent, and were outscored 56-46 in the paint and 12-9 on fast-break points.
”There’s no excuses,” Clippers coach Doc Rivers said. ”We lost.”
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