The ball bounced delicately around the rim, and the pivotal fifth game of a thrilling first-round series teetered along with it.
DeAndre Jordan leaped up and tapped it in – an instant too early.
The San Antonio Spurs got the biggest bounce in a game full of them, and the NBA champs landed on the brink of the second round.
Tim Duncan scored 21 points before Jordan was called for basket interference with 4.3 seconds left, and the Spurs hung on for a 111-107 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers in Game 5 on Tuesday night, taking a 3-2 series lead.
San Antonio earned the chance to close it out at home on Thursday night, but only after their lead dwindled to 108-107 in the frantic final minute at Staples Center.
Blake Griffin launched a leaping leaner off an inbounds play with 6.9 seconds left, but it rattled around the rim. Jordan, the Clippers’ high-flying centre, appeared to graze the ball while it was inside the cylinder, and the officials decisively waved it off.
“That was the play of the game,” said Manu Ginobili, who scored 14 points off the bench. “That’s why I say we got lucky. The ball was going in, and he happened to touch it. That would have put us down one. Instead, it was a completely different ballgame. We got a little lucky on the play.”
Video review of the call was greeted with resigned acceptance by the Clippers and their fans – and with elation by the Spurs, who hit three late free throws to pad the final score.
“I thought it was the right call,” Clippers coach Doc Rivers said. “I couldn’t tell, you know, and I couldn’t see it ... I hope to God it was the right call.”
Duncan capped a vintage performance with a key block on Griffin in the final minute, while Kawhi Leonard scored 18 points for five-time NBA champions San Antonio, who won their second straight game in Los Angeles. The Spurs took a seven-point lead in the fourth and hung on after the Clippers cut it to one on Matt Barnes’s free throws with 30.8 seconds left.
“It was anybody’s game,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. “It’s just two really competitive groups. A missed shot here, a missed shot there, really.”
Griffin had 30 points and 14 rebounds, but missed two free throws with 39 seconds to play. Los Angeles missed 16 free throws overall and went 1-for-14 on three-pointers while getting pushed to the brink.
“It’s tough, but the series isn’t over,” Griffin said. “We can’t think like that.”
This otherwise entertaining series grinded to a crawl in a lengthy third quarter featuring 35 combined free throws, but it picked up again in a tense fourth.
Jordan had 21 points and 14 rebounds while the Spurs intentionally fouled him eight times in the middle quarters, resuming their hack-happy assault on the Clippers’ poor-shooting centre.
San Antonio made a decisive 10-4 surge in the final minutes aided by a technical foul on Chris Paul, who had 19 points and 10 assists.
“It’s tough, but we can’t get it back,” Paul said. “We’ve got to go to San Antonio and play with a sense of urgency.”
Rivers hoped his team would respond better to their second victory than their first in a series filled with serious momentum shifts. Los Angeles won the opener comfortably, but then lost two straight in an overtime thriller and a blowout.
Los Angeles followed with a gritty Game 4 in San Antonio, evening the series that was widely expected to be the best in the NBA’s opening play-off round.
The series’s fever pitch extended right into Game 5 in front of a success-hungry crowd waving red towels. San Antonio kept it close in the first half with superior bench play: Along with Ginobili, Patty Mills added 13 and Boris Diaw had 10 off the bench, including a remarkable fling at the basket to beat the shot clock with 2:52 to play.
In Houston, James Harden’s 28 points led the Houston Rockets to punch their NBA play-offs second-round ticket with a 103-94 victory over the Dallas Mavericks.
Harden, a contender for the NBA’s regular-season Most Valuable Player award, delivered a key three-pointer and a steal down the stretch as the Rockets made it out of the first round for the first time since 2009 with a 4-1 win over Dallas in the best-of-7 first-round series.
The Rockets now await either the Spurs or Clippers.
*Associated Press
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