Clippers’ Chris Paul says hamstring ‘feels great’

Sidelined with a strained left hamstring for five games this month, Chris Paul had plenty of time to observe the Clippers from their bench and perhaps see a new side of his team.

What did the star guard’s observations yield? Not much.

“Just how bad I wanted to get back out there,” Paul said Thursday after the team’s 98-91 win against Memphis.

Since returning, he’s played in two games and said his hamstring “feels great.”

Paul, who had 18 points, seven assists and seven rebounds in 35 minutes against Memphis, also said he’s working with the trainers to tend to that hamstring properly. “I don’t want to miss anymore games,” he said.

He hasn’t shot well in either of his two games back from injury, making only five of 17 shots, but he’s totaled 19 assists since his return.

No lead is safe?

Buried deep within the Clippers’ identity is their tendency to lose large leads.

Against Memphis, the Clippers of 2012 nearly did what the Clippers of old achieved almost nightly.

Paul asked a reporter to check what the Clippers’ largest lead was against Memphis. The answer: 16 points.

“That’s frustrating,” he said. “That’s why you’ve got to put teams away in this league. When you put the pedal to the metal, sometimes they’ll lay down. You never know if they’ve got a back-to-back and their coach wants to rest them for the other game.”

The Clippers built that 16-point lead in the first quarter, but it was gone by the second.

Still, Paul was pleased with his team’s balanced offense, which helped them stave off a comeback by the Grizzlies. In all, the Clippers had four players score at least 17 points in the game.

“We’re a team that can do that every night,” Paul said. “We have the offensive firepower to do whatever we want to on any night. It’s just the defense that’s going to be our biggest thing. We’ve got to defend better.”

Said Blake Griffin: “We have to just make sure that we don’t let up.”

Supporting cast

“I coulda been a contender,” Terry Malloy (played by Marlon Brando), an ex-boxer turned longshoreman, laments during the iconic scene in the 1954 film “On the Waterfront.”

Memphis Coach Lionel Hollins sees the Clippers as a “great contender” right now.

“They can talk all that talk about Blake Griffin being the MVP, but if you take Chris Paul off of this team and Chauncey Billups off of this team and they might not have as many wins,” Hollins said.

“That’s no knock on Blake Griffin. It’s just that getting those two guys solidified their team as becoming a great contender.”

Etc.

On Friday the Clippers waived backup guard Courtney Fortson. He played in four games and averaged 4.3 points and 1.3 assists.

baxter.holmes@latimes.com

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