Los Angeles Clippers: Blake Griffin Needs To Be Smarter

Blake Griffin got tossed and the Los Angeles Clippers lost — and he should have known better.

The Los Angeles Clippers were without Chris Paul  and J.J. Redick — their starting backcourt — for their TNT matchup with the Phoenix Suns on Thursday night, meaning the team would need to lean heavily on Blake Griffin to win. Instead, Griffin got himself tossed from the game and the Phoenix Suns ran away with a 118-104 victory.

What was supposed to be a great matchup advantage (vs. Markieff Morris) turned even greater (vs. Mirza Teletovic and Jon Leuer) after Morris suffered a knee strain after just six minutes. Even without Paul and Redick, the Clippers could compete by taking advantage of Griffin’s athleticism and ability to facilitate.

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Instead, Griffin played just 16 minutes and ended the night with 11 points, three rebounds, four assists and a steal. He lost focus and in turn ended up hurting his team. The 82-game regular season is a marathon and one game doesn’t often turn the tides, but games like this are supposed to build confidence for legit title contenders, not be an embarrassing showing in which excuses fly from whomever decided to speak.

The seeds for Griffin’s ejection started in the middle of the second quarter, when Griffin found himself one-on-one in the high post against Teletovic. Griffin stepped back, then settled back into the post, shouldering Teletovic lower into the paint. Frustrated, you could see a little tension building between the two players.

It wasn’t more than 20 seconds of game time later that a timeout was called and Teletovic and Griffin met near midcourt, shouldering each other like two rams showing their dominance. The referees were right on top of it, and whistled the double technical. It seemed like a small deal at the time, but Griffin’s emotional security net was now gone.

Flash forward to 2:36 remaining in the second quarter, when Griffin fought his way into the paint to pull the Clippers within a point. He vocalized his displeasure after not getting a foul call, which the referees didn’t appreciate. Take a look for yourself — Griffin had a reason to be upset and didn’t seem to go too far out of line (though we don’t know exactly what he said):

After the game, Doc Rivers was asked about whether he felt his team’s reputation had anything to do with the referee calling the technicals on Griffin. Doc was hesitant to answer any questions (probably attempting to avoid league penalties) and actually implored to the media scrum “you guys write about it.”

From a micro standpoint, this is one game that probably won’t mean much come April. The referee show was in full effect and the second technical probably shouldn’t have been called. From a macro standpoint, it paints a picture that Clipper fans can’t like — Griffin lost his composure, even knowing how badly his team needed him to be out there. The Suns were torching the Clippers backcourt, but the deficit was just one when Griffin got tossed.

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We all know that Paul is the leader of this team and in crunch time the players look to him for guidance. What happens when Paul is injured? What happens when Paul moves on and Griffin is looked at as the leader? It’s spots like this where he needs to keep his composure and understand that he already has a technical foul. His team badly needed him, and he let them down.

Or better yet, don’t let an opponent get under your skin to bait you into the first technical, so you can get away with being testy about getting hammered without a foul call. This is Mirza freaking Teletovic we’re talking about, who is no novice in the area: