Detroit Pistons forward Blake Griffin clearly still harbors hard feelings for his former team, the L.A. Clippers, but his reasons are completely understandable.
Griffin was sold on being the face of the franchise and rewarded as such with a five-year, $173 million contract during the offseason of 2017, only to be traded in late January — walking back all the promises made during the summer.
According to Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe, Griffin's anger stems from him finding out about his trade to Detroit from a third party and not from coach Doc Rivers or members of the front office.
Business decisions are understandable, but promises made between men are at times tough to walk back. In Griffin's case, having a man-to-man conversation and having at least one of those who recruited him to be the face of the franchise explain the reason behind the move was what he needed to get the right closure.
Instead, Griffin went to the Motor City puzzled and without any sense of an explanation from the franchise he called home during his entire NBA career.
The 6-foot-10 forward was welcomed back at Staples Center with open arms, but he had saved some of his best fireworks for them — putting up 44 points in a 109-104 win over the Clippers — his second-best scoring night of the season after putting up 50 against the Philadelphia 76ers in October.
“He’s not my coach anymore,” Griffin said of Rivers. “It was cool to be welcomed back like that [with a tribute video]. I appreciate all the fans. It was nice to get that game out of the way. It’s kind of compared to the first game of the year, in a way. It’s such a big hype, and now you’ve got to play 81 and now we’ve got to play 41 more or whatever it is. It’s over and we’ve got a lot of basketball left.”
The Clippers will eventually look into retiring his number in the rafters, but the organization is still not remotely close to making amends with the Pistons forward, who still has some hard feelings of what took place less than a calendar year ago.
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