Blake Griffin on Clippers' Game 6 collapse: 'We took our foot off the gas'

The comeback the Houston Rockets orchestrated to avoid elimination and beat the Los Angeles Clippers in Game 6 on Thursday was almost beyond belief.

Powered by an unlikely reserve unit, the Rockets rallied from 19 down with 15 minutes to play, completely turned the tide and wound up winning by double-digits.

Some notes about that comeback, courtesy of Elias Sports Bureau:

• It was Houston's largest playoff comeback since Game 1 of the 1995 Finals against the Orlando Magic.
• No team had staved off playoff elimination with that large a comeback since the Dallas Mavericks, also down 19, stormed back to beat the San Antonio Spurs in Game 5 of the 2003 Western Conference finals.
• It was the Rockets' first playoff win (in 50 tries) in which they trailed by 10 or more entering the fourth quarter.
• Only one other team (the Spurs, also in 2003) had ever won a playoff game by more than 10 points after trailing by double-digits through three quarters.

There's a complicated sense of agency attached to turnarounds as dramatic as this one. Credit seems owed to the team that gritted its teeth and scraped and clawed its way back. But so, too, does blame seem to belong at the feet of the team that let up, couldn't close it out, collapsed.

Consider the divergent reactions of the two teams involved in that wild Game 6.

The Clippers feel they gave the game away:

"We took our foot off the gas, stopped defending, a lot of things," said Blake Griffin, who finished with 28 points on 12-of-20 shooting but went scoreless in the fourth quarter (missing all five of his attempts), grabbed just one rebound and committed three fouls.

"We were trying to run the clock out, and we stopped playing," said head coach Doc Rivers. "We gave this one away."

The Rockets, though, believe they snatched it.

"We kept saying, 'We're not going to quit,'" said Dwight Howard, who also didn't hit a field goal in the fourth, but hauled in five rebounds, shot six free throws, blocked a shot and locked down the paint on defense. "We kept believing. We never gave up on each other."

Said Josh Smith, who led the way with 14 fourth-quarter points and hit three massive triples: "We were just riding our momentum."

"That group just went out there and they just scrambled, they fought and they played their tails off on defense," coach Kevin McHale said of the five-man, James Harden-less unit that won the Rockets the game. "They had a great sense about them that they were going to accomplish something."

What they accomplished was remarkable, but it'll be for naught if they can't finish things off in Houston in Sunday's Game 7. In a series as bizarre and unpredictable as this one, don't expect home court to mean much. This is a battle that seems to defy even basic analysis.

"It's about who wants it more," said Griffin.

We'll find out on Sunday.