LA Clippers Insider: Blake Griffin Is Destined for the Season of His Career
Blake Griffin wouldn't listen.
It was the first day of Los Angeles ClippersĀ training camp at the University of California, Irvine and Griffin's first practice since a quad injury knocked him out of the playoffs in April. He went through the whole session without a break.
Several times, Clippers coaches tried to pull him out.
Each time, he refused.
"I don't blame Blake," head coach Doc Rivers said afterward. "If I hadn't played in a year or half a year, I'd probably do it, too. This is his first time he had like red meat in front of him all year, in a long time, so I get it."
Griffin's never been one to leave scraps on the table; so far through the preseason, he's attacked every morsel with a particularly ferocious appetite. He's brought an energy and focus to his work that's as familiar as it is fresh.
"Any time something is taken away and you're not really able to play at the level you want to or not even play at all, I definitely feel like that hunger changes a little bit," Griffin said. "It definitely changed for me."
The hunger comes from a thoroughly frustrating 2015-16 campaign.
During a Christmas Day win over the Los Angeles Lakers, he partially tore his left quadriceps tendon. A month later, he fractured a bone in his right hand, the result of a fistfight with Matias Testi, a former team assistant equipment manager and close friend, at a restaurant in Toronto.
Griffin's hand healed, but his quad never quite got right. He returned late in the season, only to aggravate the injury during Game 4 of the Clippers' first-round playoff series against the Portland Trail Blazers. He's fully healthy now, thanks in large part to bone marrow treatment on his leg, but his public image may need more time to recover its former luster.
"Last season sucked," Griffin wrote in a letter on theĀ Players' Tribune last month.
But it was going quite well up until the quad became a concern.
Through 30 games, Griffin averaged 23.2 points, 8.7 rebounds and 5.0 assists while shooting 50.8 percent from the field in 34.9 minutes per game. He once again looked like a potential MVP and was just getting comfortable stretching his shot out beyond the three-point line.
All of that went out the window once Griffin went down during the regular seasonāand again when his quad acted up in the playoffs.
For three months after the April procedure, one of the NBA's highest flyers was ground-bound. No running, no jumping, no cutting, no picking and certainly no rolling.
Once team doctors cleared him for full basketball activity in late July, he worked. His workouts emphasized three-point shooting, pick-and-pops, face-up jumpers and low-post looks. He got back to ball-handling drills and, by early September, started testing these tweaks in scrimmages with teammates. Come media day, Griffin was operating at full capacity.
"He's just that committed to working out and training and being great,"Ā Clippers star point guard Chris Paul said. "When you're as good of a player as Blake is, you don't expect anything less."
So far through the preseason, he has played like a man on a mission. In three games, he's hit 62.1 percent of his field goals, including 2-of-4 shooting from three, while averaging 24 points, 9.5 rebounds and 4.5 assists per 36 minutes.
"It's amazing how well he's moving and playing," Rivers said. "It's like he didn't miss last year."
The one-man fast breaks are back. So are the lobs to DeAndre Jordan, the pick-and-rolls with Paul and, of course, the slam dunks.
Griffin has fallen into foul trouble during each of L.A.'s losses (to the Golden State Warriors and Utah Jazz), but Rivers has chalked some of those up to hisĀ aggressive effort. And the minutes he spends on the floor will be all the more valuable now that his three-point shot looks like a potential threat, if not a bona fide weapon.
"I'm probably the guy that's on him the hardest about continuing to shoot it because we always talk about it," Paul said. "When you see a guy work on something so much, you just have the utmost confidence in him."
Griffin should have the highest confidence in himself. He's fully healthy now and, at 27, is smack-dab in the prime of his career.
With another banner year, Griffin could chart an unfamiliar course for himself and the Clippers: L.A. will head into the season as one of the West's best bets to topple the Warriors, perhaps in the franchise's first trip to the conference finals.
The team's roster is equipped to accentuate Griffin's strengths while spreading his usual burden across more shoulders. Marreese Speights and Brandon Bass can man either frontcourt spot in lineups large and small. Paul Pierce and Wesley Johnson will play plenty of 4, perhaps in lineups with Griffin at the 5. Raymond Felton, Jamal Crawford and Austin Rivers give L.A. three backcourt playmakers who can spell Paul, ensuring Griffin doesn't have to bring up the ball in relief.
Whenever the Clippers' 2016-17 campaign ends, Griffin will be able to opt out of his current contract, thereby becoming an unrestricted free agent for the first time as a pro. Chances are, he'll do so, what with the salary cap projected to shoot past $100 million, per ESPN's Brian Windhorst.Ā As a superstar in his late 20s, Griffin will have little trouble fetching top dollar.
Before that, he'll have to get back to dominating the league like he did before his basketball life went haywire.
Preseason Progress Report
The Clippers' preseason product has been a mixed bag, to say the least.
In L.A.'s opening exhibition against Golden State, it fell behind by as many as 53 points en route to a 120-75 defeat. Speights scored a team-high 14 points during his return to Oracle Arena, where he wore the Warriors' threads for three seasons. Griffin, with only six points and six rebounds, played a solid floor game but fell into foul trouble early on.
"You can make excuses and say, 'Yeah, that was our first and they played one and all that and they were at home and all that,'" Griffin said, "but that's not really what it came down to. It came down to us not really playing with the right energy."
The Clippers looked much more like a real basketball team the next night during a 104-98 win over the Toronto Raptors. The team's core opened up a 20-point lead in the third quarter before the end of the bench gave it all back in the fourth amid a hailstorm of jumpers from Raptors reserve Brady Heslip.
Five days later, the Clippers welcomed the Utah Jazz into Staples Center for what turned out to be a 96-94 defeat. L.A. had its chances to tie or win the game toward the end, but a missed free throw by Crawford on a three-shot foul and an untimely turnover from Austin Rivers left the team just shy.Ā The Clippers were slow out of the gate against a hard-charging, physical Utah squad, but they found their footing later in the first half and into the second by moving away from familiar stagnation.
"I loved how we came out in the third quarter and established our play, our way," Doc Rivers said. "I didn't think in the first half there was any ball movement for the most part, then the second half it was."
Ball movement has been a point of emphasis for the Clippers throughout the preseason. During the 2015-16 campaign, they finished outside the top 10 in a slew of key passing and assist categories.
| Passes Made/Game | 289.2 | 23rd |
| Assists/Game | 22.8 | T-11th |
| Potential Assists | 43.6 | T-18th |
"It's going to take a little bit of time," Crawford said. "Obviously, we have new pieces. We're all trying to do the right thing, so we'll continue to give up good shots for great shots and continue to try to get everybody touches."
Three-Guard Monty
Another big theme of the Clippers preseason? Guards, guards and more guards.
Rivers has taken long looks at three-guard lineups in each game. Against the Warriors, he gave Felton plenty of run at the 2, with Paul and Crawford alternating at 1 and J.J. Redick and Austin Rivers at 3. During the win over Toronto, he started Rivers and Felton next to Paulāa move the coach hadn't even tried in training campāthen saw plenty from the trio of Crawford, Felton and Rivers down the stretch opposite the Jazz.
"If you ball-swing, that guy is catching it and putting it on the floor," the elder Rivers said. "They are all driving and kicking and making plays, and that puts a lot of pressure on a defense."
It also takes some pressure off Paul. Where the Clippers' star point guard once had to run the offense and defend his opposite number, he now can delegate some creative duties and let Felton or the younger Rivers chase enemy floor generals.
"It allows CP to do what the rest of the league does, and that is, their point guards never guard the other point guard," the head coach explained. "We want to do that a lot this year. We want to put a lineup out there where CP doesn't have to guard the best guy."
Clippers Unveil New Locker Room
"I thought I was coming into a VIP lounge or something," Crawford said.
The locker room, which measures in at 2,600 square feet, took three months for Gensler Sports and Shawmut Construction to renovate.
"We heard about it all summer," Griffin said. "I heard there was going to be changes, so coming in and finally seeing it, it's pretty nice. They definitely made the best of the space we have."
The square footage is largely the same as before, save for a players' lounge off the entry hallway. The biggest changes, aside from fresh paneling and a bigger TV screen, are the orientation and arrangement of the lockersānow on the left side instead of the right, arranged in a semicircle rather than a rectangleāand the vaulted ceiling.
"When they first opened up the ceiling and we saw how much room there was to create a dramatic effect in here that has the feel of sails, that gives a nod to the 'Clippers ship' and at the same time, really provides height that makes this space feel twice as big as it was before," Clippers president of business operations Gillian Zucker explained.
What do the players like most about it?
"We've got our own chargers," Speights said, in reference to the outlets at each locker. "That's popping. That's nice."
Pierce Polishes Diamond
"Diamond is a stripper name," Pierce said. "I call him Rookie."
Whichever name Pierce prefers, it hasn't stopped him from taking Diamond Stone under his wing. The 19th-year veteran and the 19-year-old newbie out of Maryland have been working together since early October, arriving early at the Clippers' training facility for morning lift sessions and on-court clinics.
For Stone, it's an invaluable opportunity to learn from a surefire Hall of Famer known league-wide for his deep bag of tricks.
"It's nice to look at the guys dunking and doing all this stuff, but if you really want to watch a basketball player, you watch Paul Pierce," Rivers said. "He's fundamental. He has the footwork of a king. You love watching him play. I think it has to help Diamond at some point, and I think it will."
"It's amazing just because he can get any shot he wants and you know what shot he's going to take, but you still can't stop it," Stone said. "So I just try to contest it and do the best I can."
What, then, is in it for Pierce?
"I'm just trying to pass something to him, that's all," he said. "Just give something to the younger generation."
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