LOS ANGELES - Looking back now, there was no way to see what Terrence Mann did in the Los Angeles Clippers' 131-119 series win over the Utah Jazz on Friday night.
No way. Anyone who says he foresaw the second-year player to score 39 points to send the Clippers to the first Western Conference Finals in franchise history is still confused by the view that the first full-on loss to Los Angeles. What unfolded in front of the crowd inside the house of potential. 19 The epidemic began.
Born in 1996, Terrence Mann was drafted number 48 overall in the 2019 NBA draft, helping one of the NBA's most troubled franchises overcome an obstacle that clearly seemed damned over the years.
So many of the Clippers fans who packed the Staples center on Friday nights have lived through the years for nights that started with so much promise but turned sour. A 19-point lead against the Houston Rockets in 2015 began the team's downfall from a 3–1 series lead. There was a painful 3-1 slump last season against the Denver Nuggets in the NBA Bubble in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.
Even three home defeats against the Dallas Mavericks in the first round tested the faith of even the toughest Clippers fans. And let's not even mention the embarrassment and suffering of the decades they lived under former owner Donald Sterling.
So much stuff — and the Clippers and their fans took off a ton of it Friday night.
The entire second half felt like a collective exhalation, as the Clippers retreated from a 22-point halftime deficit. First, Mann was going, then Reggie Jackson (27 points), then Paul George (28), then Nicholas Butham (16) and then Patrick Beverly (12).
The crowd began to believe the rally could go full swing when Mann scored eight straight points in less than a minute and went into the third quarter with 3:03 to extend a 15-point lead 90-83. reduced to .
By the time Mann hit a 3-pointer to top LA 116-106 with 5:31 to go into the game, the crowd was naive.
For the next timeout, in-house entertainment cited DMX's "Party Up". The first line - "You'll make me lose my mind" - captured the moment perfectly.
Terrence Mann - just handed the first Western Conference championship in franchise history. Terence Mann?
"I believe in my work," Mann later said. "When you trust your work, you trust yourself, you're not surprised when something like this happens."
Those who have followed the Clippers closely throughout the season have enjoyed watching his development. He has been a source of pride for the front office and coaching staff of the franchise.
Those who have just started following the Clippers may have learned his name on Wednesday, when he started in place of injured Kawhi Leonard and took on Utah's three-time Defensive Player of the Year, Rudy Gobert, as a player of the year. Dunk was.
Dunk was audacious in both his execution and his ambition to take on the 7-foot Frenchman. Afterwards, only in foreshadowing could anyone honestly point out, Mann said, adding that he was tired of settling for 3-pointers against one of the best shot-blockers in the NBA.
"I just wanted to see what I could do," Mann said after Game 5.
In Game 6, he showed everything he could.
"You saw the whole game from a second year player," said George. "You saw him spreading the floor. You saw him defensively. You saw him rebound. You saw him walk towards the basket.
"You saw so many flashes of so many different things — and he did it in the most important part of the game. Honestly, he single-handedly set us back."
George spent a lot of time with Mann at the start of the 2019 season, when he was coming back from shoulder surgery.
"T-Mann was like my sparring partner," George said. "His persistence was what I needed to bring me back to play at a specific level. We challenged each other. I hope I was able to pass some things to him," he said.
"He works a lot on his game. One of the best young players I've been around. Reminds me a lot of myself. He works. So, we tell him, let's get out of here, You work so hard, why? Come out here and show it."
In many ways, it seems fitting that a young man with little connection to the Clippers' past played such an important role in changing it. Mann didn't have the same stuff that giants like Beverly had, the longest-serving Clippers.
"I was here when we were seeded eighth, just celebrating to get into the playoffs," Beverly said. "To finish a game like this, to make history, that's special, man.
"To be the last man standing and writing history is special, man, so special."
George, who grew up in Palmdale, California, north of downtown Los Angeles, knew and felt that weight.
"You felt it," said George. "Cheers, excitement. You felt the monkey off the Clippers' back in case you were out in the second round."
Even coach Tyrone Lew, who — as a player — won one of the 17 championships owned by the crosstown Los Angeles Lakers, understood history the Clippers are trying to undo here in Los Angeles. .
"It was just nice to see our fans and how they stayed till the end and how they were cheering," Lew said. "The team is starving for success and the team is doing the same thing.
"I always look at it differently. I know the Lakers are out there and there are a lot of Lakers fans out here. But once the Lakers are gone, if we're not playing the Lakers, you should be happy for the Clippers because It's all in one city. I can only feel the love and I'm so happy and proud of my people."
It's difficult to process, let alone putting the game in perspective for Jazz. Utah had the best record in the league this season. But the team that landed on the court in this series got suspicious. Young superstar guard Donovan Mitchell apparently played through a traumatic ankle injury. Veteran All-Star guard Mike Conley tried it on an injured hamstring that kept him out of the first five games of the series.
Both men give the Jazz a lift as they are out on the court. Utah also took the lead in the first half as Mitchell scored 22 high 39 points from his team and sixth Man of the Year Jordan Clarkson scored 21 points in the first half.
But the Jazz ran out of steam in the second half, as Clarkson went scoreless and Mitchell fell down just as the Clippers and their fans roared back.
"At first I think they were the toughest team and the more connected team during the series," Gobert said. "They stick together even at age 22, they keep playing their own style of basketball, they keep the ball rolling, they keep looking for the open guy, they just stick with it.
"The last few years have ended in a disappointing way for us as a team. For myself I try to ask myself the right questions when I'm able to keep a clear mind and try to think, 'I What can I do? Can we do? To make sure this never happens again.'"
It was the Clippers' night though. Incredible story, written by a child who shares a name with one of the most famous fictional writers in film history, Terence Mann, played by James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams.
This Terrence Mann even inspired a storybook comeback. In fact only this happened. And the ending is still unwritten.