Paul George managed to contest Damian Lillard's shocking 37-foot buzzer beater to close out their first round series.

“Tip my hat off to the shots he made," said George. "Tough ones. It was his night.”

George was then asked if there's anything to be done to defend a 37-foot shot.

"That's a bad, bad shot," said George. "I don't care what anybody says. That's a bad shot. But hey, he made it. That story won't be told that it was a bad shot. We live with that."

Lillard explained his thought process leading to the shot.

“I didn’t want to put it in the referee’s hands – where if there was contact and maybe they get away with contact or I end up having to take a tougher shot because there’s contact and they don’t want to decide the game," said Lillard. "When I was standing there, I was like I’m going to shoot it. He was a little bit off of me and I was like this is enough space for me to just raise up and shoot it for game. At the last second, he stepped towards me a little bit and I was like, okay I’m going to pound-dribble, side-step and raise up. I just had to let it fly, shoot the ball high in the air to give it a chance and that’s what I did."

Lillard responded to George's comments later to Chris Haynes of Yhoo! Sports.

“It’s a bad shot, but I was 8-of-12 from 30-plus feet in the series and I work on it regularly. ... It wasn’t a bad shot tonight,” said Lillard.