Video: Blake Griffin Goes Flying from Flagrant Foul

The Los Angles Clippers and Golden State Warriors got into a bit of a chippy stretch during the third quarter of their game, climaxing with this Festus Ezeli flagrant foul on Blake Griffin.

After a lot of groans from the crowd, tweets coming in about exactly what went down and incredulous reactions from the Warriors' broadcast team, the foul was eventually ruled a flagrant-1.

"

 

Flagrant 1 on Ezeli. Blake took a tough fall, Head and shoulder hit floor. Makes 1 of 2 FTs

— Eric Patten (@EricPatten) January 3, 2013

"

"

 

@adam_cox41 Easy flagrant call. Refs reviewed it and confirmed. Grabbed his arm and pulled him down as he was in the air.

— Arash Markazi (@ArashMarkazi) January 3, 2013

 

"

Now, there's no doubt that there was a foul. Ezeli grabbed Griffin's arm as he was driving to the basket.

However, did Griffin sell the hold as worse than it was?

On the one hand, it's easy to look at this and see a hideous foul by Ezeli. Griffin flies up into the air, lands on David Lee's shoulder and comes crashing to the floor.

However, combine Griffin's history with the physics that exist on planet Earth and there's a lot of an argument to be formed that points more toward flop than flagrant.

I'm not thoroughly convinced that Ezeli actively pulled Griffin down after the foul had been called, but I'm not convinced that he didn't either.

In the end, the only people who know exactly what went down will be Griffin and Ezeli.

Maybe next time future Blake Griffin will come back and tell past Blake Griffin to watch out for Ezeli's elbow grabs.