With the Clippers on the road down two to the Trail Blazers and less than two seconds left on the clock, Blake Griffin caught a pass from Lou Williams at the top of the key, took two dribbles to the left wing, and threw up a contested three-pointer.

Years ago, the headline would have been simple: Portland 103, Los Angeles 101 as Griffin’s Hail Mary goes wide left.

But this isn’t the same Blake Griffin of years past.

This is Blake Griffin, sharpshooter extraordinaire. This is Blake Griffin, the second coming of Robert Horry. This is Blake Griffin, volume perimeter shooter.

And this is Blake Griffin who you have to defend on the three-point line, or else your team will suffer the same demoralizing fate as Portland did Thursday night.

Blake Griffin is a three-point shooter now, and we didn’t see it coming

Griffin’s buzzer-beating three wasn’t some anomaly. It’s not like he threw up a shot and prayed for it to drop, only for the usually indifferent basketball gods to suddenly care about his wishes.

2017-18 Blake Griffin is a legitimate shooter now, and you, hopeless defender, should be scared.

He never attempted more than two threes per game in any of his past seven seasons. In Year 8, he’s attempting 5.8 per game and nailing them at a 43.5 percent clip. Forty-three point-five percent.

Yes, it’s a small sample size given that the Clippers have played only four games, but they’ve won all four and Griffin’s improved shooting from three holds some of the credit.

Of all players to attempt at least five triples per game, the Clippers star is shooting the 13th best percentage. His scorching start from distance is hotter than that of Stephen Curry, J.J. Redick, James Harden, and Kyrie Irving.

That’s a far cry from what he used to shoot. Last year, he averaged fewer than two three-point attempts per game and hit about a third of them. He never shot more than 44 threes total in a single season before then.

Now, he’s basically Ben Gordon.

Will he keep it up?

In the 2015-16 season, Langston Galloway made 26 of his first 47 three-point attempts. His 55 percent shooting from downtown led the NBA through much of November. But Galloway never shot better than 33 percent in any month through the rest of that season.

After a piping hot start, he finished that year a 34.4 percent shooter from downtown.

Griffin and Galloway are not equals, but Griffin’s suspiciously hot start from downtown leads to the obvious question: Can he keep it up?

Well, maybe this helps: Griffin dramatically improved as a mid-range shooter even before this year.

As a rookie, he attempted only 4.5 two-point jump shots per game, and he made them at only a 34 percent clip. But over the years, he got better. And as he got better, he attempted more, deeper shots.

In his sixth season, 2015-16, he attempted more than nine mid-range shots per game and nailed them at a more-than-38 percent clip. Last year, as he stretched his range beyond the three-point line, he shot the mid-range jumper at 42.5 percent.

For someone who didn’t shoot many jump shots early on — and when he did, they missed more often than they went in — it takes confidence to get up nine mid-range shots a game. That’s a type of confidence that grows with practice and repetition over the years.

Griffin’s put the work in

Last summer, he saw Anthony Davis, LaMarcus Aldridge, and Draymond Green diversify their offensive games by extending their range. If he wanted to be a great power forward in the NBA, he knew he had to do the same.

“I want to be someone who shoots from there confidently, for sure,” Griffin said via The Orange County Register’s Dan Woike. “A lot of us power forwards, our strength is inside or our versatility. … I don’t necessarily think falling in love with the three-point shot is a good idea, but shooting it confidently from there is great.

“The further out I can stretch, the more I can help open up the floor.”

So even if Griffin doesn’t keep this ridiculous hot streak from downtown up, it’s his confidence in attempting nearly six triples a game in the first four contests that matters. If he keeps shooting them, eventually they’ll keep falling.

And if Blake Griffin keeps hitting threes, the rest of the NBA should be scared.