When Blake Griffin went down just before halftime, you could feel it coming.

The Utah Jazz had come out of the gates firing in front of their hometown crowd for Game 3, with Gordon Hayward exploding to score more in the first quarter than he had in either of the first two games of this series. They’d built a 13-point lead late in the first, and just after the Los Angeles Clippers started walking them down midway through the second quarter, Griffin pulled up lame with a bruised right big toe that would knock him out for the remainder of the game, and perhaps beyond.

The Jazz took advantage of Griffin’s absence and the break in concentration, pushing the lead back to nine before halftime and opening a bad door to a dark place that the Clippers and their fans know all too well. OK, you thought. So this is how the Clips crumble in the playoffs this year.

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Except … well, Chris Paul had another thought.

With Griffin shelved and the Clips in need of some magic to avoid falling behind 2-1, the nine-time All-Star took over the game in the second half. Paul scored 24 points in the third and fourth quarters — his highest-scoring second half of the season — with seven rebounds and three assists in 18 minutes after intermission to knock Utah on its heels and give L.A. what it needed to survive.

The venerable Point God became a score-first assassin in the fourth quarter, slicing and dicing a Jazz defense that desperately missed injured center Rudy Gobert to fuel a 15-0 Clipper run over a six-minute stretch in the last stanza. Through sheer force of will, and some dark-warlock-status ball-handling …

… Paul turned an eight-point Utah lead into a seven-point Clippers advantage. He’d go on to hit four critical free throws in the final 10 seconds to help L.A. hold on for a 111-106 win that left the Jazz stunned, quieted down the typically raucous Salt Lake City crowd, and gave the Clips back the home-court advantage that they’d lost after Joe Johnson’s buzzer-beater in Game 1.

Paul finished with 34 points on 12-for-22 shooting, along with 10 assists, seven rebounds, two steals and just two turnovers in 36 minutes despite controlling absolutely every aspect of the proceedings for the Clippers, who have bounced back from losing Game 1 on their home floor to win two straight.

Big man DeAndre Jordan added 17 points, 13 rebounds, an assist and a block in 39 minutes of manning the middle, and defense-first swingman Luc Mbah a Moute made himself an offensive threat, scoring 15 points on 6-for-9 shooting to go with six rebounds, an assist, a steal and a block in 36 1/2 minutes.

It’s a good thing Mbah a Moute chipped in offensively in Game 3, because his primary contribution through the first two games — putting the clamps on Jazz All-Star Hayward — went by the wayside in the game’s opening minutes.

After 96 minutes of struggling to find open looks, Hayward suddenly had room to breathe free on Friday, finding pockets of space off motion and screening actions that just weren’t there in L.A. He took advantage, pouring in 21 points on 7-for-8 shooting with three 3-pointers — the highest-scoring single quarter in Jazz postseason history — to stake Utah to a 34-21 lead through 12 minutes.

He took a step back in the second quarter, sliding into a facilitating role in a more egalitarian Utah attack. After halftime, though, as Paul began to make his push, Hayward stepped up to the challenge, teaming with point guard George Hill to score 24 points in the frame and sending a charge through the Vivint Smart Home Arena crowd by blowing past rim-protecting monster Jordan for a big two-handed slam through contact that gave the Jazz a four-point lead late in the third quarter:

Even with Hayward and Hill cooking, though, the Clippers stayed within hailing distance. L.A. coach Doc Rivers stuck with defensively challenged players like Paul Pierce, Jamal Crawford and Raymond Felton for long stretches, but the vets chipped in offensively, helping keep the Jazz from developing too much separation before Paul’s mid-fourth takeover.

While CP3 imposed his will on the Jazz defense during that pivotal stretch, none of his opponents were able to do the same. Utah went 0-for-7 from the field between the 8:00 and 2:00 marks of the fourth quarter, with Hayward, Derrick Favors and Joe Johnson each having shots blocked or significantly altered by Jordan at the rim, and Hill and Johnson each missing a pair of wide-open right corner threes.

Veteran scorer Johnson finally ended the drought with a pair of floaters to cut the deficit to three at 103-100 with 1:19 to go. After some high-leverage free-throw shooting by big men — Jordan splitting a pair with 57 seconds left, Favors missing both 13 seconds later — Hayward fired an airball from three, only to see the hustling Johnson save the ball back inbounds to Joe Ingles, who dumped it off to a following-his-shot Hayward for a layup that gave him a career-high 40 and got Utah within two at 104-102 with 11 seconds left.

The Jazz fouled on the ensuing inbounds, sending J.J. Redick to the line for two. After he made both to put the Clippers up 106-102, Utah coach Quin Snyder called a timeout to draw up a dynamite play that netted Hill an open in-rhythm 3-pointer to cut the deficit to one:

Again, the Jazz fouled on the inbounds, this time sending Paul to the line. He cashed in both, putting the Clippers on top 108-105 with 5.3 seconds remaining. This time, instead of screening for Hill, big man Boris Diaw was the outlet for the inbounds play. Jordan quickly fouled him, but it was reeeeeally close to not being quick enough:

The shot was waved off, though, as the referees determined that Jordan’s foul had come while Diaw was dribbling and before he’d gathered and gone into his shooting motion. This, as you might expect, displeased Jazz fans, who showered the officials with “REF, YOU SUCK” chants from the stands.

So Diaw went to the line not to complete a potential four-point play, but rather just to try to get back to within one. Making matters worse, he missed the front end of his pair, keeping Utah down by two with less than five seconds remaining.

But then Redick, an 89.1 percent free throw shooter on the season, headed to the free throw line, missed the front end of his pair, keeping it a one-possession game and leaving the door open for a game-tying triple in the closing seconds, provided Utah — now out of timeouts — could hustle the ball up the floor and generate a decent look.

Instead, with 3.3 seconds left, Hayward capped the most memorable individual night of his seven-year NBA career with a play he’d likely rather forget.

After Hayward’s wild pitch, Paul knocked down two more free throws to seal a five-point win, take back home-court advantage, and re-assert himself as the most dominant factor in this series:

“He has an amazing will,” Rivers said after the game. “He really does. He’s just a tough, tough guy. He’s stubborn, in a very, very positive way. All the great ones have that in them. They’re stubborn enough — like, they aren’t going to lose. And that’s how he felt. And you can feel that.”

On Friday night — as he has throughout this series — he made the Jazz feel it, too.

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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!

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