Do the Clippers Have the Suns Right Where They Want Them?

For the third straight playoff series, Los Angeles spotted an opponent two wins and then roared back in Game 3. In each previous series, they kept winning and advanced.

The Los Angeles Clippers are the first team in N.B.A. history to erase multiple 2-0 series deficits in the same postseason. Their players, so impressed by the adjustments that their coach, Tyronn Lue, has been making to facilitate those comebacks, have started calling him Bill Belichick. “Yeah, right,” Lue said late Thursday, laughing at the comparisons to Belichick, who has coached the New England Patriots to six Super Bowl titles. Lue knows the Clippers remain seven wins from the first N.B.A. championship in franchise history, but on Thursday they managed to add another entry to their improbable run of Game 3 recoveries — and this time they did it without their best player. With Kawhi Leonard reduced to spectator status, watching from a Staples Center suite as he nursed a worrisome right knee sprain, Los Angeles ground out a 106-92 victory over the Phoenix Suns to slice the Suns’ lead in the Western Conference finals to 2-1.