There's definitely no quit in the L.A. Clippers.
Doc Rivers' team, needing every win it can get while clinging to eighth place in a loaded Western Conference playoff race, at first appeared to lay an egg on Sunday against Blake Griffin and the Detroit Pistons.
L.A. trailed 40-22 after the first quarter and fell behind by 23 points midway through the third, a seemingly insurmountable lead given both the tenor of the game up to that point and franchise history. No Clippers team, after all, had ever come back to win after facing such a deficit…until now.
The team pulled off the biggest come-from-behind win in the franchise's regular-season history on Saturday, using a furious fourth-quarter rally to beat Detroit by a comfortable margin of 111-101.
Biggest comeback in regular season history!**
— Tomer Azarly (@TomerAzarly) February 3, 2019
It was a tale of two halves for the Clippers, who shot 58.5 percent overall and went 7-of-12 from beyond the arc after intermission. Lou Williams poured in 26 of his season-high 39 points in the second half and helped the Clippers break a tie midway through the fourth quarter by scoring a staggering 16 of his team's last 18 points.
The reigning Sixth Man of the Year also had his hand in the pair of points he didn't score, breaking down the defense and finding Montrezl Harrell for a layup that put L.A. up 10 with less than a minute remaining.
The Clippers' stunning win is made all the more impressive because Tobias Harris, the team's leading scorer, sat out the game's last 12 minutes while icing his shoulder. Did Rivers, with his team down double-digits entering the fourth quarter, sit Harris in part because he was already resigned to a loss? Only he knows for sure, but it's pretty clear that Williams wasn't going to let L.A. lose either way.
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