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Clippers’ Chris Paul cried after Game 5 loss to Thunder in playoffs

Chris Paul grimaces as Oklahoma City's Serge Ibaka grabs a loose ball to end Game 5 of the Western Conference playoffs on May 13. The Thunder eliminated the Clippers from the playoffs last season.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
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Chris Paul is notoriously hard on himself.

The Clippers’ superstar point guard has been known to criticize himself after getting double-doubles in points and assists in games, focusing instead on a single turnover he committed.

So it’s no surprise that he took the team’s Game 5 loss to Oklahoma City in the second round of the playoffs last season very personally.

Paul committed a series of errors in the final 49.2 seconds of Game 5 that led to the Clippers blowing a seven-point lead and being forced to play an elimination game that ended their season.

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It still plagues him.

“It would be lying to you to say I’d forgotten about it,” Paul told The Times in September. “It’s one of those things that I don’t want to forget, to tell you the truth. I think for me, I feel like you have to remember things like that and therefore you don’t want that feeling again. I know I don’t.”

Now Paul and the Clippers face the same Thunder team on Thursday in their season opener at Staples Center at 7:30 p.m.

The Clippers, who have been considered championship contenders the past few seasons, have never advanced beyond the second round of the playoffs in their franchise history. Paul, in light of Game 5, puts a lot of that blame on himself. His teammates, however, don’t buy into that.

“No, obviously, we shouldn’t be focused on one person,” Blake Griffin recently said. “You hear this all the time, but one guy can’t win or lose on his own, and it’s not fair to put any type of blame on anybody.”

The Clippers definitely have an advantage against the Thunder this time around, considering they’re playing without superstar Kevin Durant, who is out with a broken bone in his foot. The Thunder are also without Reggie Jackson (wrist), Jeremy Lamb (heel), Anthony Morrow (knee), Mitch McGary (foot) and Grant Jerrett (ankle).

The only player the Clippers won’t have available come tip-off is Glen “Big Baby” Davis, who is sidelined with a groin strain.

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You better bet, though, that Paul is not taking this game lightly, to put it mildly. After all, he knows he’s going up against superstar point guard Russell Westbrook, with whom he became intimately familiar during the playoffs last year.

“You could put him on the court with the Bad News Bears, and he’s going to be ready to play,” Paul said. “We’ve got to be ready.”

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