Blake Griffin helps Clippers avoid a collapse and beat Nets, 105-100

Doc Rivers has the same advice for Blake Griffin whenever his shots start to go astray.

“He tells me you’ve got to be willing to go 0 for 20 in a game and shoot that next shot,” Griffin said.

The Clippers forward was nowhere near that kind of inaccuracy Saturday night against the Brooklyn Nets, but his midrange game had tailed off a bit recently and he missed 17- and 21-foot jumpers in the fourth quarter as the Clippers tried to avoid a complete collapse.

What was once an 18-point lead was down to four with less than a minute to play when Griffin rose without hesitation for 18- and 17-foot jumpers. They both went in, giving the Clippers exactly what they needed to preserve a 105-100 victory at the Barclays Center.

“That shot was open,” Griffin said. “It’s a shot I work on every single day, so I shot it.”

Griffin added a driving dunk in the final minutes on the way to finishing with 21 points on 10-for-19 shooting to go with nine rebounds and four assists. J.J. Redick added 21 points to help the Clippers (14-10) improve to 3-1 on a five-game trip that will conclude Monday against Detroit in Auburn Hills, Mich.

There were dueling good and bad themes in the Clippers’ locker room after they beat the Nets on their home court for the first time since Dec. 11, 2007, a span that had included seven consecutive losses.

Players were miffed that they allowed 37 points in the fourth quarter but pleased they finished off another opponent, just as they had in recent close-call victories over Orlando and Minnesota.

Brooklyn rallied in part by intentionally fouling Clippers center DeAndre Jordan, who missed three of four free throws before being removed from the game. Rivers said he took Jordan out because the Clippers weren’t getting stops, not because Jordan (12 points, 12 rebounds) couldn’t make free throws.

Thaddeus Young’s short turnaround fadeaway jumper pulled the Nets to within 93-91 with 3:51 left, but Chris Paul countered with two jumpers of his own and the Clippers got just enough stops after giving up four three-pointers in the fourth quarter.

“We’ve had leads on teams and we’ve let them back in it, so it’s a negative in that we’re still letting teams back in the game,” said Paul, who had 15 points and 14 assists. “But it’s a positive in that we were able to close it out.”

Tensions rose briefly in the second quarter when Young came up with a creative solution to a Redick screen, thrusting him to the court with both arms and earning a flagrant-1 foul.

“I felt like he was holding me on the screen,” said Young, who led the Nets with 18 points, “so I did what any other player would do and moved him out of my way.”

Jordan had some harsh words for Young and earned a technical foul, but the best response probably came from Redick, who made two three-pointers before halftime as the Clippers built a 13-point cushion.

“I’m not going to say it got me going,” Redick said of the flagrant foul. “I was engaged in the game.”

Rivers wasn’t quite as locked in when it came to tipoff time. He said he was under the impression the game would start at 5 p.m. West Coast time, not three hours earlier as scheduled, until a few days ago. The Clippers held their walk-through in a hotel ballroom because of the earlier start, taping the floor to resemble a basketball court.

One upside to the early evening start, Rivers said, was that it allowed the Clippers to go out to dinner after the game. Told that he sounded like San Antonio Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich, a food and wine connoisseur, Rivers said, “That’s the way I’m thinking. I’ll be drinking later like Pop too.”

He could toast Griffin’s fearlessness amid a mini shooting slump.

“You can’t worry about misses,” Rivers said. “They should be, like, invisible to you. To the average player, they mean something. To great players, misses mean nothing.”

Follow Ben Bolch on Twitter @latbbolch