Five takeaways from the Clippers’ 103-98 victory over Oklahoma City

Bring on the San Antonio Spurs in the second round! Well, hold on a minute. It’s easy to get a little carried away after watching the Clippers obliterate all reason Wednesday night at Staples Center in the final minutes of a 103-97 come-from-behind victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder. The triumph moved the Clippers a tad closer to the coveted No. 3 spot in the Western Conference, which would likely entail avoiding the Golden State Warriors in the second round of the playoffs. Here are five takeaways from a game in which the Clippers outscored the Thunder, 35-13, in the fourth quarter:

1. The Clippers’ bench started the comeback. It began with a prediction. “I went out to start the fourth quarter and Jamal Crawford looked at me and said, ‘We are going to get us back in this thing by the time you guys get back in,’ ” Clippers point guard Chris Paul recalled afterward. “I don’t know if he is a fortune teller, but he did it.” It happened because Austin Rivers and Wesley Johnson were active defensively, Cole Aldrich made a few baskets and Crawford sloughed off a slow start to help spark the wild rally that was completed by a mix of starters and reserves. “When you sit and watch the second group play with that type of energy, it infused with everybody,” Clippers Coach Doc Rivers said. “It almost gave the starters, for a change, the blueprint of how to play the game.”

2. Johnson didn’t give up on his shot. He had missed 10 of his first 11 shots but wasn’t tempted to stop shooting because of encouragement from his teammates and coaches. “Every time I came to the bench, they kept saying, ‘Keep shooting,’ ” Johnson said. “I couldn’t be bashful. I couldn’t hold my head if I didn’t make the shot, regardless of the fact that I wasn’t making them. I just knew that eventually they were going to go in. They kept putting that battery in my back to keep shooting and they went in.” Johnson’s back-to-back three-pointers jump-started the Clippers’ final push after they were down by 14 points with less than five minutes to play. Johnson finished with 11 points while making four of 16 shots, including three of nine from three-point range. He also had five steals.

3. Austin Rivers was strong defensively in his first game back from a broken left hand. He could shrug off making only two of eight shots because of the way he helped defend Kevin Durant, who scored only five of his 30 points in the fourth quarter. “I just tried to get under him,” Rivers said. “We were kind of getting punked a little bit in the first half. The whole team was, honestly. In the second half, I was not [thinking to] shut down Kevin Durant because it’s not possible. I just wanted to make it as difficult as possible. I’m gonna get under him and get really physical with him, and I was able to do it.”

4. The Clippers are within 1 1/2 games of the Thunder for the No. 3 spot. Whoever finishes there will likely face the Spurs, and not the Warriors, in the second round. And the Clippers and Thunder will get to partly decide who finishes third in two more head-to-head battles later this month, both in Oklahoma City. Clippers forward Blake Griffin should be back from his quadriceps injury, broken hand and four-game suspension in time to play in the final regular-season meeting between the teams on March 31 at Chesapeake Energy Arena.

5. Is Oklahoma City in trouble? The Thunder has lost five of its last seven games and it could easily be six of eight considering it plays the Warriors on Thursday night in Oakland. “I think the biggest thing we need to do is make a decision, collectively as a group from an accountability standpoint, of what type of team we want to be,” Oklahoma City Coach Billy Donovan said. “In order to do that, there has got to be a high level of sacrifice by everybody and I think this is something our team is capable of. We need to sustain our game play for long stretches of time, keep playing the right way and doing the right things. They already do this for long stretches of times but then they have these lapses like tonight.” Said Durant: “I need to play with passion and hopefully it rubs off. Losing sucks, we hate it, but at the end of the day we are still at a good spot. We just need to keep climbing.”

ben.bolch@latimes.com

Twitter: @latbbolch