LOS ANGELES — Following a fourth straight loss Sunday afternoon, a sickly Paul George took ownership of the Los Angeles Clippers' bad start to their season. “It starts with me,” he said.

George didn't take long to live up to his words.

George's monster Halloween night against the Houston Rockets was capped by both the game-tying 3-pointer with about 40 seconds remaining and the go-ahead fadeaway jumper along the baseline with 6.2 seconds remaining.

“[Just wanted to] put my team in the position to win the game,” Paul George said after the win. “That is the only thing I was thinking, get to the shots I want to get to and shoot it with confidence.”

On Sunday, Paul George accepted blame for the Clippers' slow start, explaining that it's on him to help get them out of it. He didn't wait long.

“We’ve got to raise the intensity on both sides,” George said after the loss to the New Orleans Pelicans. “It starts with me. I was poor tonight, been poor the past couple games. I’ll get it together. I’m committed to my work, I’m committed to this team succeeding. It starts with me, I got to get better, I got to do better. But then past that, we’ve got to collectively be a better team and, again, have an identity out there on that court.”

George dropped 35 points, nine rebounds, eight assists, six steals, and two blocks a night later against the Rockets. He became just the eighth player in NBA history to drop that kind statline. If you add in his five 3-pointers, he's the first-ever player to accomplish that feat.

The Clippers needed every bit of it, inching to a win over the Rockets, 95-93.

“I take full responsibility for us and our record right now, not getting off to the starts, not having the start that we want to have so far,” George added. “Regardless, like I have been saying, regardless of who is in the lineup, who’s not, I am more than capable of going out and performing and willing our team to wins. So I took a lot of on the chin for myself for the way we have been playing and for the start that we have had so far.”

The Clippers dropped games to the Oklahoma City Thunder (two in a row, in fact) and New Orleans Pelicans in the last week, each loss looking worse than the previous one. Monday's game, an October matchup against the Houston Rockets, wasn't a must-win game by any stretch of the imagination, but it was pretty darn close.

“Yeah, these are the games that we look back in March and April and look back and these are games that we gave up and could have played a lot better. I know it’s early, but these are the games that we really got to lock in on. Again, it is just about as long as start building and start playing towards the right way, then you got to live with the results. Definitely losing four, this was one that we should and we should’ve went out and got.”

The game goes in the win column for George's club, but it wasn't at all an easy one. For the second night in a row, the Clippers took a double-digit second-quarter lead and relinquished it before halftime. The Rockets led for almost the entirety of the second half until Paul George's 3-pointer tied the game up.

In addition to that, the Clippers simply cannot find the bottom of the net on their 3-point shots. Through seven games, their 30.4 percent shooting from downtown is third-worst in the NBA, behind only the OKC Thunder (29.5 percent) and Los Angeles Lakers (26.6 percent).

There isn't any explanation for it, as most of their shots have been good, open looks.

These grind-it-out type of games are ones that the Clippers are going to have to learn to win, especially when shots aren't falling.

“They have no quit in them, they made us work,” Norman Powell said after the win. “I think it’s a testament to us just to keep going and figure it out. Not every game is gonna be perfect. I don’t know what we shot today from, maybe 20% or something like that as a team, from 3. I thought we were getting some good looks all throughout the game, getting what we wanted, but just wasn’t making any shots, so when that’s not happening, you got to find other ways to win. That comes down to the defensive end, doing the little things, and I thought we did that when we needed.”

They'll take it, as they now head to Texas for a two-game trip against the Houston Rockets (again) and San Antonio Spurs.

“Man, it feels good,” head coach Tyronn Lue explained. “I don’t care who we play. It’s a young, scrappy team that play fast, they play hard, coach Silas has done a good job of just making sure everyone accepts their roles and you can see that. They play through their two young guys and Eric Gordon and everyone else is just, they get theirs when they get it. He’s doing a real good job, so we knew it was going to be a tough game. Well, I knew it was going to be a tough game. But anytime you can get a win, you’ll take it in this league.

“Tonight defensively was a step in the right direction,” George added. “I thought we did a lot of good things. We just got to keep working on that end.”