Clippers Rally From 27 Down, Stun Grizzlies 99-98 Chris Paul begged coach Vinny Del Negro to put him back into the game for the fourth quarter and not give up despite being down 21 points. The result was another Clippers comeback - one of the greatest in NBA playoff history. Paul hit a pair of free throws with 23.7 seconds left, and the Clippers rallied from a deficit that had been as much as 27 to stun the Memphis Grizzlies 99-98 Sunday night in the opening game of their Western Conference series. The key, Paul said, is to keep believing. "Unfortunately, that's how we play," he said. We get killed in the first three quarters and in the fourth quarter we like to try to stand up for ourselves, and we found a way to win tonight. The Clippers tied the NBA playoff record for largest deficit overcome at the end of three quarters, when they trailed by 21. "I don't think I've been part of a game like that ever," Clippers forward Blake Griffin said. It was unbelievable. Rudy Gay missed a 15-footer with 0.9 seconds left after the Grizzlies squandered a lead they held for the first 47 minutes, with a 24-point cushion disappearing in about nine minutes. "Obviously, we gave it away, and everybody's kind of down," Gay said. We're still into it. It's a long series, and we're ready to fight. That's all this means. We've got to fight hard. Los Angeles Clippers' Blake Griffin (32) hangs on the basket after dunking over Memphis Grizzlies' Zach Randolph (50) during the first half in Game 1 of a first-round NBA basketball playoff series, Sunday, April 29, 2012, in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston) Close The Clippers lost Caron Butler to a broken left hand, and he said he thinks he caught his hand in Gay's jersey on a screen. Del Negro said other players will have to step up. Nick Young did just that, scoring 19 points off the bench with three 3-pointers in the midst of the Clippers' 26-1 run. Paul finished with 14 points while playing a team-high 38 minutes despite a groin injury that kept him out of the regular season finale against the Knicks. Griffin had 17 and Butler 12 before leaving the game. Young said he didn't even see the score, being on the court down the stretch for a change. He said he looked up late and saw they had a game when he started hitting his shots. It's crazy. It's a blessing," Young said. It shows how hard we fought. How we rallied together as a team, and just made stops down the end. Gay finished with 19 for Memphis. Mike Conley and O.J. Mayo had 17, and Marc Gasol scored 14. Game 2 is Wednesday night. The Clippers outscored the Grizzlies 35-13 in the fourth quarter, the most points in the final period by a Memphis opponent this season. Los Angeles also hit 13 of 17 from the floor, including 5 of 6 beyond the arc after hitting only one the first three quarters. The Grizzlies looked ready to roll as they ran out to a 20-point lead in the first quarter and were up by 27 twice in the third, the last on a pair of free throws by Mayo with 1:34 left. The Clippers finally got going in the fourth, as the Grizzlies looked like they shut it down way too soon. They had five turnovers in the fourth. Even though the Clippers had seven themselves, the Grizzlies looked lost as they just lost the ball going into the lane or put up shots that had no chance of going in. "We just got careless," Memphis coach Lionel Hollins said. We just lost a little bit of our discipline from a defensive perspective. But offensively, we just started walking it up and trying to throw it into the post instead of running it in. We ran earlier. We attacked. We were in transition earlier. We just stopped doing that and got conservative and it cost us.