Houston, TX (SportsNetwork.com) - Blake Griffin scored 14 of his 22 points after intermission and the Los Angeles Clippers overwhelmed the Houston Rockets in the second half to rally for a 107-94 victory at the Toyota Center.
The Clippers outscored the Rockets by a 40-18 margin to turn a 12-point third- quarter deficit into a 95-85 lead with 3:45 left to play, then held on the rest of the way to notch their second win against Houston in five days. Los Angeles posted a 137-118 triumph over the Rockets at the Staples Center on Monday, prior to dropping the first two tests of a three-game road trip.
"It started on defense and we got stops defensively and we had a lot of energy on defense and that helped our offense run," Griffin said of the team's comeback. "This was good for us and we'll take wins like this especially on the end of this road trip."
JJ Redick also finished with 22 points and DeAndre Jordan racked up 12 points and 18 rebounds for the Clippers. Chris Paul contributed 14 points and 13 assists to the triumph.
Houston, which shot just 36.1 percent after halftime and dropped its second straight at home, was paced by Chandler Parsons' 23 points and eight rebounds. Dwight Howard amassed 21 points and eight boards in the loss, with Patrick Beverley tallying 19 points for the Rockets.
"We just stopped playing the way we had played to get the lead," Howard said of the team's second-half letdown. "We had to continue to do things that got us the lead and we didn't do that tonight and they capitalized on it."
Down 67-55 five minutes into the third quarter, the Clippers dominated the remainder of the period to take their first lead since the game's early stages.
Houston missed its last seven shots of the quarter while committing four turnovers during an 18-0 Los Angeles surge spanning the end of the third and the beginning moments of the fourth. Consecutive buckets from Jared Dudley, the last a 3-pointer, knotted the score at 71-71 before Jamal Crawford put back a Redick miss at the buzzer to send the Clippers ahead.
Redick then began the fourth quarter with a successful runner and Crawford was fouled when making a layup with 10:21 to go. He sank the ensuing bonus attempt for a 78-71 advantage.
Houston got the deficit as close as three, but Crawford buried a pair of treys during a 7-2 spurt that put Los Angeles up by a 95-85 count with under four minutes left.
Darren Collison's triple with 1:39 remaining provided the dagger for Houston, which trailed 102-90 at that point.
The Clippers started out strong as well, netting the game's first seven points and building an 18-8 lead just past the midway mark of the opening quarter. Houston closed out the frame on an 18-4 run, however, with Howard leading the charge with eight points that included two successful free throws from the often foul-line challenged center.
Back-to-back 3-pointers from Beverley extended the Rockets' advantage to 39-29 with 7:34 to go in the second quarter, and the margin reached 13 three minutes later when Parsons threw down a slam off a Beverley steal to make the score 48-35.
Houston went into halftime up 55-46 behind Howard's 16 points on a 6-of-9 success rate.
Game Notes
Crawford had 16 points and Collison 10 to lead a Clippers bench that outscored Houston's reserves by a 28-12 margin ... Beverley finished with a career-high four steals ... Rockets leading scorer James Harden was held to 12 points on 4-of-15 shooting ... The Clippers have now won seven of the last eight meetings between the clubs ... Houston scored 54 of its 94 points inside the paint.
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