After being on the sideline since Christmas, it was to be expected that Blake Griffin would look a bit out of sorts as he made his return to the Los Angeles Clippers' lineup for the team's Sunday matinee meeting with the Washington Wizards. You don't spend three months recovering from a partially torn quadriceps tendon and a broken right hand, plus four games serving a suspension for the altercation with a team equipment manager in which you sustained that hand fracture, without accumulating some rust that must be knocked off.
With less than two weeks remaining before the start of the postseason, though, this is just the time to do it ... especially when you've got an All-Star floor general there to carry the load while you get back up to speed. In his first appearance since Christmas Day, Griffin started and scored six points with five rebounds and four assists in 24 1/2 minutes, but largely faded into the background as Chris Paul took over.
CP3's game-high 27 points, 12 assists, three rebounds and a steal led L.A. to a 114-109 win at Staples Center that clinched a top-four seed and home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs for the Clippers, and likely sounded the death knell for the Wizards' hopes of making their third straight postseason.
After trailing by as many as 17, the Wizards mounted a fourth-quarter comeback behind the shooting and playmaking of John Wall, who scored nine of his 15 points and dished six of his 13 assists in the closing frame, helping Washington draw as close as three with 47.4 seconds left in regulation. But after Washington spoiled a Clipper possession and deflected the ball out of bounds, leading to an L.A. inbounds with just 3.1 seconds remaining on the shot clock, Paul had the answer, pump-faking Wall into the air, taking one dribble to his right and splashing a deep triple that extended the lead to six with 22 seconds left, taking the air out of the Wizards' sails and putting the game out of reach.
Washington has now lost five of seven to fall to 37-40. Randy Wittman's club sits in 10th place in the East, separated from the Indiana Pacers in the race for the conference's final playoff slot by 3 1/2 games and the 38-38 Chicago Bulls. After a huge Saturday win to stay in the No. 8 spot, Indy takes on a New York Knicks club without starters Carmelo Anthony, Kristaps Porzingis and Jose Calderon in Manhattan on Sunday; the Pacers are heavily favored, meaning the Wiz could end Sunday four backs out of the postseason with just five games remaining on their schedule.
Shooting guard Bradley Beal, who suggested last week that the Wizards had quit in a loss to the Sacramento Kings, had a nightmarish afternoon. The 22-year-old scored eight points on 2-for-16 shooting in 39 minutes of work while allowing Clippers shooting guard J.J. Redick to break loose for 18 points on 7-for-13 shooting in 30 minutes of floor time, helping L.A. get out to an early lead that, a few nervy late-fourth-quarter moments aside, it would never relinquish.
While the circumstances surrounding the latter stages of Griffin's absence weren't exactly commendable, the Clipper faithful still went nuts when he was Griffin introduced in Doc Rivers' starting lineup. Afterward, his teammates mobbed him and proceeded to act as if they were beating him up ...
 | @zdlr187 | |
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... which, we remind you, is a season-long thing that isn't been pegged to Blake's fight or, um, anything else unsavory.
Much of the discussion surrounding Griffin's return has focused on how his presence would impact the two-way flow of a team that went 30-15 without him, fielding top-six units on both ends of the floor. While the Wizards aren't the kind of elite competition against whom the Clips will have to match themselves in a few weeks' time, the early returns were mostly positive; the Clips outscored Washington by 23 points in Griffin's 24 1/2 minutes.
Griffin got into his playmaking groove early, dishing a pair of assists in his first three minutes of action, including a pretty drop-off on a give-and-go to spring a cutting Luc Richard Mbah a Moute for a dunk:
Whether due to lingering effects of the injury to his shooting hand or just plain too much time away, Griffin lacked touch on his jumper and didn't seem comfortable attacking from his pet spots at the elbow and on the block, which seemed frustrating to him. Luckily, there's still this other thing he can do to score: run toward the basket and jump really high to catch a lob from CP3, which he did at the 6:51 mark of the opening quarter, much to the delight of the fans at Staples.
There were a couple of moments in which Griffin's presence did seem to introduce some awkwardness into the Clips' half-court offense, with his stationing near the elbows meaning he occupied some of the same space into which Redick would typically cut coming off a curl. Those hiccups offered a reminder of some of the issues that short-circuited the Clippers before Blake's injury, and of how spreading the floor a bit more with him unavailable has helped keep L.A.'s offense from capsizing in his absence.
As was the case before his injury, though, there were also instances where the lack of spacing didn't seem to matter at all, with CP3 still having enough room to hit Jordan with the high hand-off after a screen up top:
Rivers played around with Griffin as a small-ball center, getting quick looks at him alongside trade-deadline acquisition Jeff Green and Wesley Johnson at the four. He positioned him as the lone starter in groups featuring Green, Wesley Johnson, Austin Rivers and Jamal Crawford, and in another back at the four spot next to backup center Cole Aldrich, Johnson, Rivers and Crawford. After the Wizards got close late in the fourth and decided to try intentionally fouling Jordan with 2:45 left, Doc brought Griffin back at the five in a closing lineup featuring four shooters — Johnson, Crawford, Redick and Paul — that could be worth keeping an eye on in the postseason.
For the most part, though, Doc stuck with the script: more than half of Griffin's floor time came with the starting unit, and Blake-Jordan-CP3-Redick-Mbah a Moute outscored Washington by 16 points in those 14 minutes.
The Wizards, of course, didn't do themselves many favors, playing a brand of defense that you wouldn't characterize as especially organized or stout:
 | @MikePradaSBN | |
This is a great metaphor for the Wizards' season pic.twitter.com/uq76ikycBC
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A 10-2 run late in the second quarter got Washington within hailing distance, but the Clips still led 60-49 at half after shooting 57.8 percent from the field and holding the Wiz to a 36.5 percent mark. They went through multiple stagnant stretches in the second half, but got enough of a defensive spark from Jordan (12 points, 12 rebounds, three blocks, two steals) and enough playmaking from Paul and Crawford, who added 19 points, six assists and four rebounds in 25 minutes off the bench, to keep the Wiz at bay, as on this beautiful after-timeout play late in the fourth in which Crawford fed Jordan for a pivotal alley-oop dunk.
While Griffin's back on the court, he's not quite out of the woodwork yet. He said this weekend that the tear in his quad is still there, and could require offseason surgery; at this point, though, it's "about managing the pain" more than risking re-injury by playing.
ESPN.com's J.A. Adande reported Sunday that Griffin would be limited to 20 minutes in his return (he blew past that by four minutes) and that he wouldn't pay in back-to-back games before the end of the season. That means he'll likely miss one end of this week's Tuesday/Wednesday home-and-home with the Los Angeles Lakers, and half of the season-closing pair, either at home against the Memphis Grizzlies or on the road against the Phoenix Suns. The Clippers will get the chance to reintegrate him, but only in fits and starts, for several-minute stretches at a time, and very carefully.
"It was a blast being back out there," Griffin said after the game, according to Beth Harris of the Associated Press. "My rhythm was pretty bad, conditioning was a little bit better than I thought it would be, but not great. I feel good now, but the key is the next few days."
It wasn't a stunningly impressive reintroduction, and a significant jump in degree of difficulty awaits. But even if he doesn't look like himself just yet, Griffin is back to run, jump, hustle and grind along with Paul, Jordan, Redick and the rest of the Clippers. That might not be enough to put the fear of God into the Golden State Warriors and San Antonio Spurs, but if it can get the Clips themselves believing they've got a fighting shot against the West's titans, it's a hell of a start all the same.
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