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LOS ANGELES – This time the Los Angeles Clippers didn’t let their late lead slip away.

This time they hit their shots down the stretch and didn’t turn over the ball.

This time Chris Paul showed up when it counted most.

The Clippers don’t always want to have to depend on Paul in the fourth quarter to bail them out and essentially be their closer.

Then again, what we want sometimes isn’t always what we get, and the Clippers more often than not have been content to put the game in the hands of Paul and let the chips fall where they may.

It’s not a bad strategy when you have arguably the game’s best pure point guard on your team, but it’s not always a guarantee for success as the Clippers found out in blowing late leads against the San Antonio Spurs and Golden State Warriors before defeating the Denver Nuggets, 103-95, on Wednesday to prevent their first three-game losing streak of the season.

Paul just didn’t come up big in the fourth quarter, scoring nine points and dishing two assists; he was a force from the second quarter on, scoring a season-high 36 points to go along with nine assists and two steals.

“He was on tonight, I didn’t know he had 36,” Clippers center DeAndre Jordan said. “Chris is always big for us in the fourth quarter, but tonight he was on, scoring, dishing the ball, playing defense, he was all around good for us.”

Sometimes, however, Paul and Blake Griffin can be so good in the fourth quarter that the rest of the team turn into high-paid spectators as was the case in the Clippers’ back-to-back losses heading into Wednesday night. Even in Wednesday's win, Paul and Griffin combined for 41 of the Clippers’ 56 second-half points.

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LOS ANGELES -- Here's Los Angeles Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro addressing the media following his team's 103-95 win over the Denver Nuggets on Wednesday night.

Del Negro said he liked his team's fourth-quarter defense a lot better in this game than he did in the Clippers' last two games, both losses. And he lathered praise on DeAndre Jordan for his rebounding and game-changing defense, among other topics on which he touched.

Clippers (19-11) vs. Denver Nuggets (18-15) at Staples Center, 7:30 p.m. PT

Five storylines to track:

1. Closing out: The Clippers had prided themselves on closing out games this season with Chris Paul on the court. They had come back from 18 down against the Portland Trail Blazers on the road, 15 down against the San Antonio Spurs at home and had comeback from at least 10 points down in six games since Jan. 29. In their first back-to-back losses since December, however, the Clippers squandered late leads with Paul being the primary culprit. They blew a 95-92 lead with 9.5 seconds left to the Spurs when Paul inexplicably threw the ball to a wide-open Gary Neal for the game-tying three-pointer and the Spurs won in overtime. Against the Warriors, the Clippers were up 97-95 with 2:07 left in the game before the Warriors closed out the game with a 9-0 run to win. Paul, who had five turnovers against Golden State, did not score in the fourth quarter and went 0-for-4 from the field. “The fourth quarter is when leaders have to step up and I didn’t,” Paul said. “I had way too many turnovers.”

2. Three in a row: After not losing back-to-back games in 2012, the Clippers will now try to prevent losing three straight for the first time this season and for the first time since April 9, 2011. The Clippers had actually circled Wednesday’s game against the Denver Nuggets on the calendar long before their recent struggles and it had nothing to do with the fact that it is the last game before the All-Star break. Denver beat the Clippers 112-91 on Feb. 2 in the Clippers’ most lopsided loss at home this season and Paul wants to return the favor in the rubber match after the teams’ split the first two games on each others' home floors. “We have to come out and give a good showing against Denver, we owe those guys,” Paul said. “What better way to go into the All-Star break than with a win. We have to win… They beat us here at home and we need to get this win for our minds going into All-Star break.”

3. Mo-mentum: Lost in the midst of the Clippers’ two-game losing streak has been the play of Sixth Man of the Year candidate, Mo Williams. Against the Warriors, Williams hit six three-pointers, nailing his first six attempts, and scored 13 of his 22 points in the fourth quarter to give the Clippers the lead late before they froze up and failed to score another point. It was Williams’ first time hitting six three-pointers in a game since April 8, 2010 and ninth time he’s hit that many threes in a contest. This season, Williams is averaging 13.8 points and 3.3 assists. The Clippers’ bench has scored a total of 682 points this year with Williams’ 360 points accounting for 52.7% of the production.

4. Injury bug: Outside of losing Chauncey Billups for the season with a ruptured Achilles tendon, the Clippers’ current roster is relatively healthy heading into the last game before the break. The same can’t be said for the struggling Nuggets. Danilo Gallinari (left ankle sprain), Nene (left calf strain) and Rudy Fernandez (lower back strain) will all miss Wednesday night's game while Ty Lawson (left ankle sprain) will be a game-time decision. After the Clippers lost Billups for the season, his former Nuggets teammate Kenyon Martin made his debut for Los Angeles and the team went after J.R. Smith hard before he ended up signing with the New York Knicks. If Billups had been healthy and Smith had signed with the Clippers, Nuggets coach George Karl could have been looking at a lineup Wednesday night similar to the one he took the Western Conference Finals in 2009.

5. Blake show: Against the Warriors, Blake Griffin had 21 points and 9 rebounds. It was only the second time since Feb. 4 that he hasn’t had 10 or more rebounds in a game. During that stretch he hasn’t reached at least 20 points only twice. The last game Griffin failed to reach 20 points or 10 rebounds was Feb. 2 when the Clippers lost to the Nuggets and Griffin finished with 18 points and 5 rebounds, his season in low in rebounds. Griffin trails only Kevin Love this season in 20-point, 10-rebound games and is the only player this season averaging over 21 points, 11.0 rebounds and 2.9 assists.

PLAYA VISTA, Calif. – “Beat L.A.!”

Chris Paul had heard the chant several times last year when the New Orleans Hornets played the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round of the playoffs. He grew up hearing the chant whenever he would watch the Lakers play on the road and he no doubt thought he might hear the chant during the two minutes or so he was supposedly on the Lakers.

Paul, however, has started to hear the chant every time the Clippers are on the road and it is one of the many signs he says he thinks the perception of the Clippers is beginning to change.

“I’m starting to hear that a lot,” Paul said. “It’s funny because our New Orleans fans used to chant that all the time against the Lakers. It makes the game that much more exciting. It's good.”

This season the Clippers are the biggest draw in the NBA on the road, averaging 19,441, putting them ahead of the Los Angeles Lakers (19,126), Miami Heat (18,973) and Boston Celtics (18,076).

“That’s how it’s going to be,” Clippers guard Randy Foye said. “Every game this season, and this is something new for me, is sold out and fans are there cheering an hour or so before the game. That’s great, that’s something this team hasn’t had and something this city has never seen from this team.”

Foye has even started seeing a change in the way opposing teams at home act when they play the Clippers; perhaps feeding off the energy of the sold our crowd.

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Clippers (19-10) vs. Golden State Warriors (11-17) at Oracle Arena, 7:30 p.m. PT

Five storylines to track:

1. Road warriors: Unlike their Staples Center neighbors, the Clippers have shown they can win on the road this season. The Clippers are 8-6 on the road this season and have won 7 of their last 9 games away from home after starting 1-4. The Clippers have never finished with an above .500 record on the road as a franchise and can actually equal their road win total from last season (9-32) with a win against Golden State on Monday. Not only have the Clippers been winning on the road, they’ve been coming back from big deficits to do so. Against Portland last week the Clippers overcame an 18-point deficit to defeat the Trail Blazers 74-71. The Clippers rally in Portland was the team’s fifth road win since Jan. 29 in which they have comeback from a deficit of 10 or more points. Prior to this season, the Clippers' last four road wins in which they overcame a double-digit deficit came in four different years.

2. The 20/20 Club: Blake Griffin recorded the first 20-point, 20-rebound game of his career against the San Antonio Spurs on Sunday when he had 22 points and 20 rebounds before fouling out. Griffin is the only player in the NBA this season averaging over 21 points, 11.0 rebounds and 3 assists. Griffin is also shooting 53.4% from the floor. Since the 1990-91 season, only four different players have finished a season with those averages and shooting percentage. Since the introduction of the shot clock in 1954 only 8 different players have finishes a season with those numbers and Griffin, 22, is the youngest to accomplish the feat so far.

3. Rebounding back: For the first time this season, the Clippers are in the top half of the NBA (14) in rebounding after being ranked last for much of the first month of the season. The biggest difference has been the return of Reggie Evans, who missed the first five games of the season with an off-season injury, and the signing of Kenyon Martin, who made his debut Feb. 8. Suddenly the Clippers no longer need to depend on Brian Cook and Solomon Jones for minutes when Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan need rest. In fact, since Evans’ return and Martin’s signing Jones has been cut and Cook hardly sees the floor anymore. The Clippers have outrebounded their opponents in their last nine games and have had more offensive rebounds in seven straight games. That should continue Monday night as the Warriors were outrebounded 45-31 Saturday against the Memphis Grizzlies. Golden State's minus-4.46 rebounding differential is one of the worst in the league while the Clippers' plus-3.14 margin is one of the best in the league.

4. Bounce back game: Chris Paul called his costly turnover at the end of regulation against the Spurs on Saturday the worst play of his career. He also promised it would never happen again and the Clippers for the most part simply chalked up the loss as another learning experience. “Obviously, disappointing and frustrating and all that, but there’s no time for a pity party here,” Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro said Sunday afternoon. “We let one slip away yesterday and we’ve also been able to win some games down the stretch this year. You have to learn from it, you have to get better and you have to work.” The good news for the Clippers is they usually respond well after a loss. They have yet to lose back-to-back games in 2012. The last time the Clippers lost two in a row was on Dec. 28 and 30 at the start of this season.

5. Bledsoe's return: As disappointed as the Clippers were in not landing free agent guard J.R. Smith, who ended up signing with the New York Knicks, the Clippers got a pleasant surprise on Saturday with the play of second year guard Eric Bledsoe, who got his first extended minutes of the season after only playing a total of 19 minutes while recovering from off-season knee surgery. While he didn’t score, Bledsoe was a playmaker on the court in the third quarter, leading the Clippers to a 17-3 run to cut the Spurs’ 15-point lead and finishing with a team-high +14 in the +/- department. His between the legs pass to Griffin for a dunk on a fast break during that run could be sign of things to come in the future when he gets on the court.

Five minutes and 10 seconds into the second half of Saturday's game between the Los Angeles Clippers and San Antonio Spurs, Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro made his best decision of the day -- which isn't necessarily saying much, because he made a couple 0f questionable ones too.

The move: He pulled Chris Paul in favor of Eric Bledsoe, notable for three reasons.

For one, Paul rarely exits a game so soon after the start of either half. For another, Mo Williams was available from the bench but passed over by Del Negro. And, for three, it was in favor of Bledsoe, a guy who had played only 19 minutes this season before the move, mostly because of injury but also because of ineffectiveness since his return on Jan. 30.

But Paul was struggling to keep up with Tony Parker defensively, and Del Negro felt Bledsoe could do it better than his starting point guard could.

He was right. Over the next six minutes and nine seconds -- Bledsoe's only time on the court all game -- the Clippers made a 17-3 run, limiting Parker and the Spurs' offense and turning their own on through the fast break.

He didn't score, missing his only shot attempt, but his two assists and three rebounds were accurate measures of his effectiveness this day.

"I thought Eric Bledsoe came in and got us back into it," Del Negro said afterward, adding that Paul channeled Bledsoe's aggressiveness when he came back into the game, keeping the court open.

The Clips were down 65-50 when Bledsoe entered and were down only 68-67 when he exited. His +14 plus-minus was the best of any Clipper on Saturday and the second-best of any player on the court after Parker's +15.

"That's just how I play," Bledsoe said Saturday when asked about the influence his insertion into the lineup had. "I come up with the loose balls, hustle plays. I get more hustle plays than a lot of people."

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LOS ANGELES -- Here are video interviews with the Los Angeles Clippers' Blake Griffin and Chris Paul following Saturday's 103-100 overtime loss to the San Antonio Spurs.

Griffin took a while to emerge from the showers following the game but appeared composed by the time he did speak with the media. He clearly took away some positives, such as the Clips' belief they should have beaten a team who came in the hottest in the league.



Paul took responsibility for the unusual last-second play but also tried to explain his thinking in trying to throw the ball back to Randy Foye. He said the loss to the Spurs stung more than any other loss this season.

LOS ANGELES -- Here's Los Angeles Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro talking to the media following his team's 103-100 overtime loss to the San Antonio Spurs on Saturday at Staples Center.

Del Negro discussed the final seconds of regulation in full detail but refused to take the blame for how the Ryan Gomes-to-Chris Paul inbounds pass ended up. The Clips' coach did like his team's overall effort.

Clippers (19-9) vs. San Antonio Spurs (21-9) at Staples Center, 12:30 p.m. PT

Five storylines to track:

1. Measuring stick: For The past 15 years the Spurs and Clippers have been on opposite ends of the spectrum in the NBA, and their head-to-head record certainly reflects that. The Clippers have only one win against the Spurs in their past 20 meetings and suffered through an 18-game losing streak to San Antonio from 2006-10. The Clippers have also only won once in San Antonio since 1997. The Clippers suffered one of their worst losses of the season against San Antonio at the beginning of the season when the Spurs beat them 115-90 on Dec. 28. The Spurs are currently on a 10-game winning streak, the longest current run in the NBA, and a win Saturday would move them a step closer to the best record in the West. A Clippers win, however, would move the Clippers past the Spurs for the second-best record in the conference.

2. Comeback kids: The Clippers came back from an 18-point deficit Thursday to beat the Portland Trail Blazers 74-71. It was the Clippers’ biggest comeback win of the season and their largest comeback victory in three years. One of the biggest differences between this year’s team and those that have faded in the past has been the Clippers’ ability to close out games on the road. The Clippers’ rally in Portland is the team’s fifth road win since Jan. 29 in which they have come back from a deficit of 10 or more points. This season, the Clippers have battled back from double-figure deficits six times. Before this season, the Clippers' past four road wins in which they overcame a double-digit deficit came in four different years.

3. Spurs influence: No other franchise in the NBA has had a greater influence over the Clippers recently than the San Antonio Spurs. They are the team the Clippers have tried to model themselves after culturally and philosophically after Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro was hired two years ago. Del Negro played with the Spurs from 1992-98, helping lead the Spurs to the playoffs on five occasions. Two of Del Negro’s assistants, Marc Iavaroni and Howard Eisley also played for the Spurs. Del Negro credits Spurs coach Gregg Popovich with helping mold his coaching philosophy and says he always wants them to win, except when they play the Clippers.

4. Board game: Last month around this time, the Clippers were dead last in the league in rebounding. Since then Reggie Evans has returned from an offseason injury, Kenyon Martin was signed as a free agent and the Clippers now find themselves 15th in the league in rebounding. The Clippers have dominated the glass in their past five contests, outrebounding their opponents 242 to 179. The Clippers are 4-1 in that span and have outrebounded their opponents in eight straight games and have had more offensive rebounds in six straight games. That advantage should continue against the Spurs, who are 19th in the league in rebounding.

5. Foye not feeling it: When Chauncey Billups was lost for the season, Randy Foye was inserted into the starting lineup so only one position would be altered by the loss. Del Negro did not want to move Mo Williams, who is in the running for Sixth Man of the Year honors, from the bench to the starting lineup, and has no one to provide a scoring punch off the bench. The problem, however, has been that Foye has not embraced the role of being a starter, at least statistically. In his past three games Foye is 5-of-26 from the field (19.2 percent) despite being a career 41.2 percent shooter. His streaky play has forced Del Negro to lean more heavily on Williams, who is averaging 13.7 points and 3.4 assists. Williams has accounted for 51.7 percent of the Clippers’ bench scoring this season and is shooting 45.6 percent from the field.

The Los Angeles Clippers players who had played with J.R. Smith were confident that the free agent guard would eventually sign with the Clippers.

In the end, those who didn’t know Smith as well but predicted he would sign with the team that offered him the most money proved to be right.

Smith signed with the New York Knicks Friday for a pro-rated share of their $2.5 million mini-midlevel exception and a player option for a second year. The Clippers were only able to offer Smith the veteran's minimum for the rest of this season.

Smith, who returned to the U.S. Thursday after playing in China, had spent the past two weeks hinting that he could sign with the Lakers, Clippers or Knicks on Twitter. He even tweeted Thursday night that he was watching the Clippers game at the airport and retweeted several tweets about the Clippers.

Chris Paul and Kenyon Martin said Wednesday night that they were confident Smith would sign with the Clippers and help replace Chauncey Billups, who was lost for the season last week with a ruptured Achilles tendon. Smith played with Martin and Billups in Denver and played with Paul in New Orleans. All three, along with Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro and general manager Neil Olshey, had been recruiting Smith to sign with the Clippers.

“I talk to J.R. all the time, whether he comes here or not,” Paul said Wednesday. “J.R. stays with me during the summer, he was at my wedding. He’s one of my really good friends and he knows we’d love him to be here.”

With Smith now in New York, the Clippers will turn their attention to possibly signing another shooting guard. Yahoo! Sports reported the team would hold workouts Friday for free agent guards Bobby Simmons and Jermaine Taylor. Simmons, who averaged a career-high 16.4 points and 5.9 rebounds with the Clippers during the 2004-2005 season, has been averaging 12.9 points and 6.9 rebounds for the Reno Big Horns of the NBA Development League this season.

Clippers (18-9) vs. Portland Trail Blazers (16-14) at Rose Garden, 7:30 p.m. PT

Five storylines to track:

1. On the road again: After returning from a six-game, 11-day trip the Clippers didn’t even get to sleep in their own beds after their first game at Staples Center in nearly two weeks. The team boarded a flight to Portland for the second game of a back-to-back against the Trail Blazers. The Clippers have not won at the Rose Garden since claiming a double overtime thriller in 2008 and had lost five straight and nine of 10 to Portland before defeating them Jan. 1 in Los Angeles. The Clippers lost their last game in Portland Jan. 10 but the Blazers have not been the same team since that win, losing three straight afterwards and going 9-12 after a 7-2 start.

2. No L.A.: The Clippers won’t have to deal with Blazers forward LaMarcus Aldridge, who will miss his second straight game with a sprained ankle. The All-Star had been averaging 22.6 points and 8.3 rebounds for Portland. His absence will likely mean Blake Griffin and the Clippers will see more of Nicolas Batum, who is averaging 13.1 points and 4.0 rebounds this season. Griffin, meanwhile is in the midst of one of the best seasons ever for a front court player. He is the only player this season in the NBA averaging more than 21 points, 11 rebounds and three assists per game. Since the introduction of the shot clock in 1954, only eight players (Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bob Lanier, Artis Gilmore, Jeff Ruland, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone and Shaquille O’Neal) have finished a season with those averages.

3. Lawler’s Law: Clippers longtime announcer Ralph Lawler’s law is that the first to score 100 points in an NBA game wins. That hasn’t always been true but the Clippers have made Lawler look pretty good recently, winning nine of their last 12 games while averaging 100.5 points during the stretch. So far this season the Clippers are 10-0 when holding their opponents to under 90 points and are 14-2 when holding their opponents to under 100 points. The Clippers are also one of three undefeated teams this season when allowing 95 or fewer points. The Clippers are fifth in the NBA in points per game (98.6) and eighth in assists (22.0).

4. Key turnovers: When the Clippers lost to Dallas on Monday, Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro didn’t focus on Griffin’s poor free-throw shooting or Caron Butler’s missed three-pointer at the end. He focused the turnovers. The Clippers turned the ball over 19 times in Dallas, led by Chris Paul, who had a season-high five. Against Portland, turnovers will once again be a key factor. The Clippers and Blazers are in the top seven in the league when it comes to protecting the ball and the team that does a better job of that Thursday should win the game.

5. The Butler did it: As difficult as it has been for road teams to win at the Rose Garden, Clippers forward Caron Butler is averaging 23.5 points and eight boards over his last four games in Portland. In the Clippers’ loss there last month, Butler scored 20 points and grabbed six rebounds. Butler, who has a combined 44 points and 13 rebounds in his last two games, had his best game of the season in his homecoming game Monday in Dallas, scoring 23 points, grabbing eight rebounds and hitting five three-pointers. Look for Paul to feed Butler early to start the game and then work the ball inside to Griffin and DeAndre Jordan with Portland playing without Aldridge.