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The L.A. Clippers suffered a huge blow to their season last year when Blake Griffin missed nearly five months of action with a broken hand and a torn quad tendon in his leg.
The most disappointing part of last season for fans was how Griffin broke his hand: by punching a team equipment manager. Griffin apologized numerous times for the incident and worked his way back into the lineup for the Clippers, but it never seemed like he was able to return to the court as the old dominant Blake Griffin.
With the 2016-17 season close to it's start, Griffin issued another a far more personal apology to the fans of the L.A. Clippers on Friday in a piece for the Players' Tribune.
“I'll just get it out of the way.
Last season sucked.
I am truly sorry. What happened in Toronto was 100% my fault. I messed up.
There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about it. And I don’t mean that in some clichéd “not a day goes by” way.
I genuinely think about it every single day, and I just feel like I let down the fans who have been riding with us since the beginning.
If I took one positive from last season, it’s that there were a lot of people who were obviously disappointed in me, and who told me so, but who were still in my corner. I’ll never forget what those people did for me during a time when I literally had to turn off my phone to get away from it all.”
Griffin continued in the piece as he recalled stories of his time with the Clippers, how Clipper fans embraced him, and how they deserve much better than what he gave them last year. Twitter, which is known for its harsh remarks and criticism by users, went off on Griffin after the incident. Griffin recalled what he would often see on his social media account after the incident.
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“To this day, I’ll tweet out something like, “So good to be back home.”
And the first 10 replies are like, “Make sure you don’t punch anybody.”
Dang.
That’s fair, Twitter. Tough, but fair.”
The incident with equipment manager and good friend Matias Testi was unfortunate, and nobody but Griffin feels worse about it. The 6'10” power forward out of Oklahoma says the biggest and closest critic to him really made him rethink everything he had done and wanted to do.
When I was at my lowest point, a few days after the incident happened last season, I got a call from my older brother Taylor, who was over in Italy.
He didn’t tell me what I wanted to hear. He said to me straight up, “Man, what are you doing? This is not you. What are you doing this for?”
I was crushed.
It broke through all my walls. To hear that from him, somebody I’ve looked up to my whole life, who always tells me what I need to hear, that’s when I had a pretty big realization about who I am, and who I want to be.
You can read Blake Griffin's full apology to Clipper fans in his Players' Tribune piece.
