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If I’ve learned anything from my beautiful, intelligent wife, I’ve learned it’s best to look and act appropriately when attending a special occasion. So, I felt it was appropriate to wear a suit and tie to cover game three of the playoffs last night. To me, the playoffs are a special occasion. An international event that is covered by the upper echelon of sports media. I figured, if I was gonna be amongst the upper crust, I should look and act classy. Trail Blazer’s owner Paul Allen wore a suit instead of his usual comfortable garb tonight too. Great minds…

The Trail Blazers have also shown great class on the court throughout this round one playoff series, despite being down two games to nil. Their offense has been run off the road almost completely, the bench has been virtually silent compared to the regular season, and Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum haven’t been able to put up their usual impressive numbers, but at least the Blazers act like they deserve to be in the playoffs. They are carrying themselves with a proud grace. The disgusting, despicable, and dumb Clippers, do not.

Instead of relying entirely on their skill and team chemistry to win games, I believe the Clippers have been engaging in psychological warfare with the officials. The team’s coach Doc Rivers waggles his tongue at the refs so much during the games you’d think he’d take off like a helicopter. And on the court, the Clippers act like Pavlov’s dog every time the whistle is blown. Even when the calls are in their favor they still twist their faces into a pout, throw up their hands, and widen their eyes with a look of injustice like a toddler being told it’s time to leave the playground. Personally, I believe it causes the officials to make less calls against them because they don’t wanna hear about it. Call me biased, but I think it’s true.

Going into their first home game of this playoff match-up, the Trail Blazers were in a do or die situation. Being down three games is not a good position to be in, and a home game is a good place to make sure that didn’t happen.

When the dust finally settled, the Blazers played a frenzied game and came out triumphant with a 96-88 win.

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The difference in the Blazers’ performance from the first two games to game three was like night and day. The Blazers looked much more confident and comfortable right out of the gate. Big guns Dame and CJ each ended up doubling their combined scores from the first two games, scoring 32 and 27 points, respectively. Mason Plumee came up huge and rumbled the defensive boards pulling down 18 rebounds, and three more on the offensive side for a lucky total of 21 rebounds in the contest. The whole team sacrificed their bodies diving for loose balls and contorting themselves to the point of imbalance to scoop in shots in the paint. The Blazers were finally able to find some cracks in the Clippers defensive wall and drain some nice, open shots.

Once the Blazers got the first lead of the game in the first quarter the Clippers looked like they were already panicking. Per usual, they flopped and flailed as much as possible to get their calls. In the third quarter Clippers point man Chris Paul literally turned his back on a live ball to throw a kicking and screaming tantrum at an official because he didn’t get a whistle when him and Dame were tangling for a loose ball. Needles to say, he got his whistle with a technical foul to boot! Last night’s officials weren’t having any of the Clips bullshit, and the Blazers turned the tables and clamped their defense down on the Clippers holding them to 40.9% shooting.

In the post game press conference Doc Rivers spelled it out very clear why his team fell to Rip City.

“They were the more physical and tougher team tonight, for sure. They played hard. They destroyed us on the glass. They ran harder. They got to their spots quicker. They got to the loose balls faster. They played hard. They deserved to win the game.”