Blake Griffin was ejected last night in the contest between the Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Clippers at Oracle Arena.
The Dubs won the contest late thanks in part to Stephen Curry’s heroics and Klay Thompson’s defense. Thompson blocked Chris Paul’s shot late in the game and helped secure a home victory.
At the conclusion of the game, Griffin expressed some frustration with the officiating with ESPNLA’s Arash Markazi:
“Instead of just playing straight up and playing a game, it got into something more than that, and it’s unfortunate because you want to play a team head-to-head,” Griffin said. “You don’t want to start playing other games and playing cowardly basketball.”
Draymond Green elbowed Griffin around the neck area at the end of the third quarter and the highflyer had a few choice words for the Warriors’ forward, which resulted in a technical foul. Green was assessed a flagrant 2 and got thrown out of the contest.
In the fourth quarter, Griffin got tangled up with Andrew Bogut. The Aussie was awarded a flagrant 1 foul while the Clippers’ forward was given his second technical foul of the game. A second unsportsmanlike call carries the weight of automatic ejection, thus robbing Los Angeles of their best interior player.
Doc Rivers lobbed a few verbal jabs at the Dubs afterwards per Arash Markazi: “Honestly, I thought we were just kicking their butts and they went to something else, to be honest,” Rivers said. “But that’s fine.”
The Clippers still had an opportunity to win the contest but faltered late.
Clippers-Dubs is beginning to take the form a rivalry given the entertaining nature of the games and their outcomes. Since Paul joined the Clippers, the teams have met 10 times with Golden State winning six of the contests.
And yet, Mark Jackson was quick to contradict that very notion. Carl Steward of the San Jose Mercury News relayed his words:
“It was a tough, hard-fought game, but I still believe it’s not a rivalry because neither one of us has done anything,” said Jackson. “It was two teams competing with an edge. It’s just physical basketball, good old-fashioned basketball — fouls, hard fouls, screens, two teams playing for something.”
These two teams will meet again at Staples Center on January 30, 2014. The game will be televised before a national audience on TNT.
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