All it took was one quarter for Austin Rivers to power the Denver Nuggets to a pivotal Game 3 win.

On Thursday night, Rivers exploded with the hot hand in the fourth quarter to break a close game. With six minutes left in the fourth quarter and the game tied at 91-91, Rivers took it upon himself to lead the Nuggets to victory. The guard started to knock down threes to lift Denver as the clock ticked down in the fourth. Rivers scored 16 of his 21 points in the fourth quarter. The guard scored four three-pointers to give Denver the lead late in the game.

The heroic playoff performance from Rivers allowed Denver to take a 120-115 win over Portland and gave them a 2-1 series lead. The win and performance were a great feeling for Rivers, who was not signed until April. The guard was traded to the Oklahoma City Thunder from the New York Knicks in March but was waived a few days later. Rivers was on his couch until Denver signed him to a 10-day contract in April. He was eventually signed for the rest of the season after Nuggets star Jamal Murray suffered a season-ending injury.

“I sat there for like a month and a half, waiting on the phone to ring,” Rivers told reporters after the game. “I just put my faith in God, having conversations with myself, talking to God like, ‘What’s the plan? What’s going to happen? All the feedback I kept getting is, a lot of teams liked me, but they didn’t know what type of character I was and how I’d be in their locker room. My basketball ability was never questioned; it was who I was as a person. Which is actually even worse.”

“Truthfully, it broke my heart. Because I know who I am, and I’ve always had good relationships with people, but you can have one instance with mistakes and be labeled something.”

“Couldn’t be happier for the kid,” coach Michael Malone said of Rivers.

The Nuggets will look to take a 3-1 series lead in Game 4 against the Trail Blazers.

This has already been a crazy NBA offseason with free agents playing Bachelorette with owners, teams blackmailing their fans into new publicly funded arena deals, and the obligatory Summer League speculation from the salivating masses. Lost in all of this madness however has been the stealthy moves by the Los Angeles Clippers to make their team into what promises to be the most amusing, though definitely not the best team in the Western Conference.

Take a quick look at who the Clippers have managed to get together since the end of the playoffs:  uprooting journeyman power forward Matt Barnes and center Spencer Hawes is a smart move for a team looking to upgrade talent and downgrade bodies, while getting Lance Stephenson in return guarantees not only a talented shooting guard but also shenanigans like his infamous ear tactics, his stunning portrayal of a paraplegic or even  his general attitude.

The Clippers also signed free agent Josh Smith to a one year deal at the veteran’s minimum which will not only provide the Clippers with some much needed depth off the bench but also with Smith’s average seven technical fouls per season and his much maligned shot selection issues.

Perhaps as a form of checking their more impulsive guys on the roster, the Clippers also signed NBA veteran/legend/god Paul Pierce, also known as maybe the most cocky shooter in the league. His bluster isn’t unbacked however; Pierce’s game winning credentials are well established already.

Add these guys to an already volatile Clippers roster that stills contains dynamic, short statured and shorter of temper point guard Chris Paul who allegedly was so hard on his now-returning teammate DeAndre Jordan that Jordan wanted to leave LA,  Austin Rivers who keeps trying to convince us he’s NOT there because he is the coach’s son, the unshakably self assured but simultaneously elderly Jamal Crawford and the athletic freakishness of Blake Griffin?

The Clippers have assembled a powder keg of players who are all scorers and big personalities on and off the court; combine this with a criminally overrated and incompetent GM cum head coach and the bright lights of LA and we finally have the Clippers team that we’ve all dreamed of for so long. I can already see Chris Paul’s head exploding.