LOS ANGELES — What he's been doing lately seems otherworldly, at least in a basketball sense, but Mo Williams says it's nothing unusual.
Maybe not, but he's been hot — very hot. Since coming back after missing three games with a sore right foot, Williams has been the Los Angeles Clippers' chief catalyst in a big way.
He probably still isn't happy that he's not starting, but he hasn't uttered a word of complaint — at least publicly — and he clearly has warmed to his new role.
"Just playing," Williams said Sunday afternoon. "Same thing every time. You obviously just go out and do the best you can. I try to perform and do whatever I can to help the team."
In the Clippers' 103-91 rout of the Toronto Raptors at Staples Center on Sunday, Williams scored a team-high 26 points on eight of 15 shooting. In his past three games, he's scored 26, 25 and 26 points off the bench and has made 29 of 45 shots, 64 percent.
Williams was virtually unstoppable at the start of the final quarter, scoring the Clippers' first 17 points. His three-pointer off a fast break gave LA a 20-point lead, 93-73, with seven minutes, 22 seconds to play.
"He's getting a little bit more comfortable knowing when he's going in," coach Vinny Del Negro said. "Guys are looking for him, we're running some sets through him a little bit, and he's been hot. He's been making some tough shots.
"You've got to guard Mo. He's going to make shots. That's what he does — he's a shot-maker."
The win came two days after a wrenching 101-98 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Kevin Love's three-pointer at the buzzer. The Clippers needed a convincing victory and got it against the Raptors, who had allowed only one of 16 previous opponents to score 100 or more points.
They held Toronto to 35.8 percent shooting and won the rebound battle, 44-40. But they also committed 20 turnovers and got a bit lazy in the second half.
"We gave up too many offensive rebounds, and we turned it over too much, but I thought we kept battling," Del Negro said.
While point guard Chris Paul missed his fifth consecutive game with a strained left hamstring, others continue to come through. Caron Butler, who sat out one game because of a hyper-extended right knee, had 15 points. Chauncey Billups scored five points but dished out 14 assists. Center DeAndre Jordan had 16 points and a season-high 16 rebounds. Blake Griffin added 18 points and nine rebounds and opened the game with a slam dunk on an alley-oop pass from Randy Foye. The rout was on.
But Williams gives the Clippers energy off the bench, something they'll need as they get further into the season. Even his teammates recognize that he has accepted his job as a reserve after being a starter virtually his entire career.
"From the last three games, I think he's done a great job embracing that," Griffin said. "Now I think he knows what to expect. It was hard at the beginning of the season. We hadn't even had many practices, and we were thrown out there. Now we kind of know who we are as a team and we have an identity, so he's done a great job embracing that.
"He's a big, big weapon for us."
Williams promptly credits his teammates for setting screens for him and getting him the ball in good spots. But he clearly has a hot hand, too.
"I didn't do it by myself," he said of his fourth-quarter performance. "Let's get that straight. My teammates know how to set screens. That's one thing we know how to do well. . . . They really set great screens, and we really execute it. They got me the ball in spots. But any time you do something, you're not doing it alone."
No, but it sure looks that way.
