SAN ANTONIO – When Doc Rivers walked into the locker room, the scene stopped him. Chris Paul called on the Clippers to congratulate the young guard responsible for saving the season and present him the game ball. Everyone clapped. Everyone let out a long, loud cheer for Austin Rivers.

"For a moment, for a half second maybe, I became a dad in there," Doc Rivers told Yahoo Sports later on Sunday at the AT&T Center. The tears welled in his eyes, but he quickly wiped them away and stiffened in the concrete corridor.

View photos Austin Rivers scored 16 points in Game 4. (AP) More

To trade for his son, Rivers had to make a case on the move's merits to a dubious basketball community. He's had to live with the criticism. They've had to live with it together. They had Sunday together, too.

Austin Rivers had his finest moment in the NBA on Sunday, scoring 16 points, delivering defense, deflections and a 114-105 victory over the San Antonio Spurs to bring this best-of-seven series back to Staples Center at 2-2. He made deft drives to the basket and fearless finishes to stun the Spurs.

For nine years, Doc Rivers coached and lived in Boston. For most of that time, his wife and children stayed in Orlando. Austin completed middle school and high school, spent a year at Duke and moved onto the NBA. Father and son were separated a long time, often coming and going in moments Doc had flown down and stolen an off-night for a high school game or an ACC game on Tobacco Road.

"Listen, we haven't been together a lot," Rivers told Yahoo Sports. "In a lot of ways, I am his coach."

More coach than father, he's trying to say. It's an honest admission, and it comes tinged with a touch of sadness. Nevertheless, Austin Rivers has had to find his own way with these Clippers, earn his own respect. This was a beginning on Sunday, nothing more, nothing less.

As much as anything, it's been Chris Paul and Blake Griffin fueling him with belief. In the losing locker room of Game 3, Griffin told Austin Rivers that he could make a difference, that he needed to use his size and speed to go downhill, to assail the rim. Austin heard him, and heeded him.

"I need you," Paul told Austin on Sunday in the huddles, and, yes, Austin finally found a way to impact this Clippers season. The NBA's a survival of the fittest, and that's the kind of performance that Austin will need to deliver again and again to have staying power. Everyone wanted to probe for the "Happy Days" moment between coach and player on Sunday, between father and son.

Austin dismissed all that. "Nah, man, we didn't win a championship."

Mostly, Austin wants to talk about his responsibility to his teammates – which is where a young player has to start in the NBA, especially this one. After Game 4, the first question asked of Austin had been about giving his father "an early Christmas present." Everything's within the context of Doc, and that's how it'll be until the son can prove that he's a consistently good player, that he belongs in these moments for a championship contender.

Wisely, there was no "I told you so," and no-one-believed-in-me defiance after Game 4. This was an immense performance at the crossroads of the Clippers' season, but it was only one. Austin Rivers wants to do it again. That's how the criticism will stop. Play well again, and again.

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