LOS ANGELES -- Only one member of the Houston Rockets would admit to hoping to face the LA Clippers in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs in the wake of the road team's 135-103 rout Wednesday night at Staples Center.
For Austin Rivers, it's about purely personal reasons, a chance to claim family bragging rights and to beat the team that traded him last summer. Chris Paul played it coy, but Rivers knows he feels the same way.
"Absolutely, you could see it tonight in the way he played," Rivers told ESPN after Paul torched the Clippers for 27 points and 7 assists, a performance highlighted by a 60-foot buzzer-beater to end the third quarter.