Griffin's injury nothing like calamities of Clippers' past
Posted Oct 28 2009 2:43PM
LOS ANGELES -- Blake Griffin could be out six weeks with a stress fracture in his left kneecap, and this can only mean the Clippers are cursed, doomed to an eternity of nosing pebbles up impossibly steep hills, jinxed beyond mortal comprehension, banished yet again to the great below.
Or not.
Chasing ghosts can be great fun, but the actual impact of the Griffin injury in the non-spiritual world is that it's a bad couple of months for the No. 1 pick and the Clippers, but nothing like some past calamities.
Danny Manning, the Clippers' No. 1 pick in 1988, may also have been -- like Griffin -- the top selection in the draft, the reigning college Player of the Year, and he may also have hurt his knee on a seemingly innocuous play.
But Manning lost a little more than half his rookie season at a time when a torn anterior cruciate ligament put a career in jeopardy. Plus, Manning was the center of hope in the Clippers' then-dismal universe. Ron Harper tore his knee up in 1990, but that was particularly crushing because the Clips were proving upwardly mobile in a season of great promise, unlike, say, these Clippers. And ex-Clipper draftee Shaun Livingston jammed his knee through a sausage grinder with such force in 2007 that the team physician at the time, one of the most experienced sports doctors in the country, said he had never seen anything like it.
Griffin out six to eight weeks, at the start of the season, is nowhere near those past follies. Especially in a season in which the Clippers are capable of missing the playoffs even with perfect health and one in which Griffin isn't even the starting power forward. Marcus Camby is, though with the certainty that the versatile Griffin was going to get major minutes either at small forward or at his natural position (and bump Camby or Chris Kaman to center).
The dark clouds beginning to gather are more about what could happen, because there are negative implications. This is not the way to start a terribly important season for the Clippers, one that may determine whether they stay with the veteran roster of Baron Davis, Camby and Kaman or junk it and hit the youth thing harder. That's the first potential fallout. The worry is the Clips and their previously shaky chemistry could break slow from the gate, get down, lose some more, and decide to shop the coveted Camby and his expiring contract before the trade deadline.
Either way, it's more dispiriting news for a roster that hasn't handled its frustrations well in the past. The Clippers are down a key part of the rotation and that much closer to losing now, which could stretch through to January. It's not like Griffin will return to the lineup at full speed, and continued losses have a tendency to lead to change. That's a lot of dominoes in play.
The impact on Griffin is that he missed part of summer league with a strained shoulder and missed part of training camp with a sore knee before averaging 13.7 points and 8.1 rebounds in 28 minutes while playing in seven of a possible eight exhibition games. Now he's on a timeline to sit out the first 20 games or so of his rookie season. Griffin is not just missing playing time. He's missing learning-curve time that is important for a first-year player facing so many expectations.
"I don't think there's going to be any setback at all," coach Mike Dunleavy countered. "He's the most advanced rookie I have ever had in terms of knowing your stuff, mentally, IQ-wise, for what he's supposed to be doing and picking up on your defensive rotations, your coverages, your play sets. When we came in the first day, he knew all the plays he's supposed to know from both [power forward] and [small forward]. That's why he was able to play the way he played in preseason for us.
"The fact is, with Marcus Camby getting injured and being out for a period of time, when Blake got a chance to start and play big minutes, there should be no question in his mind what he's capable of doing. He's played against good teams. He's played against the Lakers, he's played against the Spurs. He's played against [Tim] Duncan, [Antonio] McDyess, [Andrew] Bynum. A lot of really good players. He's played against big teams and small teams. So I don't think it's a setback at all once he comes back healthy."
In the meantime, DeAndre Jordan and Craig Smith are in line for Griffin's minutes in an unexpected career break. There goes any potential, though, for a compelling Camby-Griffin position battle anytime soon. Along with it goes a key piece of the Clippers' planned versatility, the chance for the most NBA-ready of all rookies to develop on schedule and whatever good mojo the Clips could have used to whip into the season.
The talk of curses, that still remains.
via NBA.com
