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The Los Angeles Clippers had no business beating the Utah Jazz on Friday, but another extraordinary performance by Chris Paul ended up being the difference. The Clippers trailed 34-21 after the first quarter, lost Blake Griffin to a toe injury and surrendered 40 points on 13-for-21 shooting to Jazz star Gordon Hayward. Utah's crowd went bananas for its first playoff game in five years, and its shooters were on target. Just like in Game 2, though, the Jazz had no answer for Paul running pick-and-rolls.

Paul dismantled Utah's defense possession after possession en route to 34 points on 12-for-22 shooting, plus 10 assists and seven rebounds. Twenty-four of those points came in the second half, in which Los Angeles outscored the Jazz 62-48 to escape with an unlikely victory.

The Clippers' first lead since the first quarter came when Paul hit a 3-pointer with four minutes to go. On the possession after that, he had the highlight of the night, splittinig a pick-and-roll with a beautiful behind-the-back dribble, then going all the way to the rim for a layup:

On the very next possession, Paul turned the corner on a pick-and-roll, drove all the way into the paint and lofted in a floater that the bigger Joe Ingles couldn't quite get his hands on:

And on the next one, Los Angeles ran the same play, but instead of taking the floater, Paul kept his dribble alive, went left and hit a runner off the glass over Jazz big man Derrick Favors:

It was a personal 9-0 run at the perfect time, and it capped off a 15-0 Clippers run that put them up by seven points. It was also an illustration of what makes him the league's premier floor general. When his team absolutely needed him, he would not be stopped.

"He has an amazing will," Clippers coach Doc Rivers said. "He really does. He's just a tough, tough guy. He's stubborn in a very, very positive way. All the great ones have that in 'em. They're stubborn enough, like they aren't going to lose. And that's how he felt. And you can feel that. I think his energy kind of rubbed off on everybody on the team."

Even with Paul doing everything right, the Clippers needed to get several breaks. After a night of hot shooting, Utah went cold down the stretch. Favors missed two clutch free throws, Boris Diaw missed one and Paul was not called for a foul when he appeared to make significant contact with Hayward. The Jazz had a chance to tie it with three seconds left, but Hayward threw an inbounds pass out of bounds. This was a concern about Utah heading into the series -- as similar as these two teams are in terms of talent, only one of them had real playoff experience together.

For the Jazz, the question was never whether or not they could match up with the Clippers. It was, when the going gets tough, can they persevere? In the series opener, when nobody expected them to win without Rudy Gobert, they did, thanks to some late-game heroics from Joe Johnson. Two games later, with everything going their way, they didn't. The Clippers had every excuse in the book, and yet they kept plugging away and executing their offense.

After Game 1, it was easy to crack jokes about the Clippers choking, given their debacle against the Houston Rockets two seasons ago and a few ill-timed turnovers the season before that. As memorable as those high-profile failures are, though, what about when they beat the Spurs two years ago after trailing 3-2 in the series, with Paul hitting the game-winner over Tim Duncan's outstretched hand? What about winning a crazy Game 7 against the Golden State Warriors in 2014 in the middle of the Donald Sterling fiasco? The story of these Clippers is complicated, but one thing is simple: if you'd like to know whether or not teams are scared of Paul in big moments, well, here's Jazz coach Quin Snyder talking about him on Thursday:

After Paul broke Utah's collective heart, Snyder repeated his line from Game 2 about Paul being the best pick-and-roll player in the entire NBA. When Griffin went down, in fact, Snyder was concerned because it meant there would be even more pick-and-rolls involving Paul and DeAndre Jordan. Stopping that has been the Jazz's biggest problem, and unless Gobert's return is imminent, there are no signs that they are any closer to solving it.