Final NBA playoff seeds up for grabs tonight

The Jazz want to play a slower game – they are ranked last in the league for pace, with 93 possessions per game, compared to the Clippers who are middle of the pack with 98 possessions per game.

Fayetteville, Ark – Three former Hogs are heading to the NBA Playoffs with their respective teams.

Neither is the momentum they’re riding.

With everyone finally healthy and after winning the final seven games of the regular season, the Clippers are thinking championship, not conference finals.

The team must think they can reverse that record because they fought so hard down the stretch to secure home court over the Jazz.

Star Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert suffered a knee injury within the first minute of Game 1 between the Los Angeles Clippers and Utah Jazz. Los Angeles is looking like it did early in the season and the Clippers should be able to send a message today at home with a big win over the Jazz.

“The identity has changed, the culture’s changed”, Cauley-Stein said. “They could really do something”. However, they both possess the ability to explode to the rim; finishing off alley-oops or pick and roll plays with relative ease. The Clippers lost the next game and the conference semi-final series at home.

The Clippers finished the regular season with a record of 51-31, an identical mark as the Jazz, but L.A. holds the tiebreaker by winning the season series with Utah 3-1. “It should be Blake (Griffin’s) job, and Doc’s job and J.J”. Maybe he’s saving some bounce for the playoffs, but maybe he just had one too many knee surgeries.

The Clippers, who have struggled to close out games for most of April, have followed the coaching maxim of bend, don’t break.

The Clippers have sold out 276 consecutive games.

“It’s been seven years since we won a (playoff) game, five years since we’ve been in there”, he said. It just proves the type of player I am and that I have been and how hard I have had to work to get to those type of milestones. Also, Blake Griffin, Chris Paul, and J.J. Redick can all opt out of their contracts after this season.

Their sense of urgency may never be greater. Whether Jordan can be consistently effective remains to be seen with Defensive Player of the Year candidate Rudy Gobert expertly patrolling the paint for the Jazz.

Utah outscored the Clippers 16-10 to open the third before Crawford’s jumper put Los Angeles ahead 70-68.

For the Jazz, this will be the first time in the playoffs for some pretty important players.

The Jazz beat Patty Mills’ San Antonio Spurs 101-97 on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) but still fell short of stealing the Western Conference’s fourth seed away from the Clippers on the final day of the National Basketball Association regular season. When the playoffs arrive, the Clippers revert to their decades of losing. He could return soon.

The Kings move on to continue the seemingly never-ending process of rebuilding – a process restarted when All-Star center DeMarcus Cousins was traded to New Orleans in February – knowing there is still a lot of work but hopeful they’re moving in the right direction.

“Does that mean”, he mused, “that there is no residual?”