Blake Griffin Injury Update: Out vs. Cavaliers, Knicks
By Tom West
Blake Griffin will be out for the Los Angeles Clippers’ games against the Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Knicks this week.
The Los Angeles Clippers will need to try to continue their 10-1 record without Blake Griffin yet again this week, as he’ll be sidelined for at least their next two games. Dan Woike of the Orange County Register has reported that the hope to have Griffin back during this tough road trip was simply too optimistic, and has confirmed he’ll miss the Clippers’ upcoming games against the Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Knicks:
"Griffin, who has been out since Dec. 26 with a partially torn tendon in his left quad, is with the team on their current five-game trip, but he will not play Thursday in Cleveland or Friday against the Knicks in New York, per a team official.Griffin has said the plan was to return sometime during this critical trip, in which the Clippers face four teams in the top eight in net rating."
While facing the Knicks without Griffin isn’t exactly worrying considering how the rest of the team has been playing, the Cavs are a totally different story. With LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love together once again, they are the toughest team the Eastern Conference has to offer. They were able to start getting back on their feet with a 91-78 win over the Brooklyn Nets on Wednesday night, but in their previous game they were obliterated by the Golden State Warriors 132-98.
The entire affair just wasn’t even a contest. The Cavs’ switches on defense were slow, they couldn’t keep up with the Warriors’ clinical ball movement, and they relied far too much on isolation plays to bail them out. Simply put, the Warriors out-classed them in every facet of the game, and while they’ll look to move on as quickly as possible, it must have damaged their confidence a little.
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Plus, it revealed that the Cavs aren’t quite as imposing right now as we may have thought.
Yes, they may be the best of the East and it isn’t close, but after scoring just 91 points against both the Houston Rockets and Nets over the last week, they certainly aren’t firing at an unstoppable pace. Against the Clippers’ 4th ranked offense, they may, just may, have a surprisingly hard time.
They don’t have Blake Griffin and this puts more pressure than ever on the likes of Chris Paul, J.J. Redick, DeAndre Jordan and the bench. Yet, as they continue to step up in the absence of their superstar power forward, their game against the Cavs may be far closer than expected if you were to predict the outcome of a Blake-less matchup a month ago.
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When it comes to key matchups to look out for, look to see whether Luc Mbah a Moute can do much in an attempt to bother LeBron. Also, how will Iman Shumpert fare against Redick’s tireless off-ball movement and near-unstoppable shooting coming off screens? Finally, the matter of how Kevin Love (who’s been struggling as of late with his offensive role) will score when going inside against a top-tier defender like Jordan.