DeAndre Jordan and the rest of the LA Clippers are fed up with Blake Griffin being a punching bag on his way to the rim. They get it, many teams have a defensive strategy against Griffin to foul him hard enough on his way to the rim, that there is no way he can have one of those electrifying dunks to act as a catalyst for increasing his teams energy level. That and the fact that he is constantly on the receiving end of a hoop and the harm.
Just because they understand the opposition’s strategy in defending Blake Griffin, doesn’t mean they are going to sit by idly and take it. DeAndre Jordan for one has spoken out about how he plans to deal with those that put a little something extra into their fouls on Blake Griffin…
“I feel like people are intentionally trying to hurt him,” Clippers center DeAndre Jordan said. “It’ll all come back around.”
“If Blake gets fouled, I can’t go punch someone in the nose,” Jordan said. “We can’t do that but throughout the course of a game, other fouls happen to other players on the opposite team and if they happen to be hard fouls, they happen to be hard fouls. We’re going to protect our teammates; it doesn’t matter who it is.”
Jordan has a point, you can’t just sit back and let the bullies hack one of your franchise players. On the other hand this isn’t hockey where you have enough players in the playing rotation that you can have enforcers with the sole purpose of protecting the franchise guys. The Clippers need DeAndre on the court, so if he is going to act as enforcer, he better be careful in how he does it. He may want to watch old game tape of Charles Oakley for starters…
[Quotes via ESPN]
