Blake Griffin suffered a serious-looking knee injury on Monday night when teammate Austin Rivers fell directly into Griffin’s knee. If you’re squeamish, you might want to skip this video.
Lonzo Ball wasn’t to blame for Blake Griffin’s injury, despite Doc Rivers saying so
It was Austin Rivers who ran into Griffin’s knee, and Ball didn’t cause that.
We’re still waiting to hear how serious it is and what Griffin’s status will be.
That said, there’s one oddity we should address in the meantime, one that involves Doc Rivers. In his post-game press conference, Rivers blamed Lonzo Ball for this injury, not his son Austin, the player who actually made contact. Here’s video and transcription of the relevant quote.
“Lonzo was just trying to make a play, but he went in and usually when someone goes in that hard they call it. But I think Lonzo knocked someone into Blake and it was like a trigger effect. What can you do?”
Rivers isn’t saying Ball did anything malicious on the play. I’m not sure Ball did anything on this play, though. Here’s a screenshot:
The sequence of events, as best I understand it, is:
- Ball is driving into the lane and loses the basketball
- Ball changes directions in an attempt to re-control the basketball
- Griffin also starts to dive onto the floor chasing the basketball
- Austin Rivers’ momentum is still carrying him towards the rim, where Ball was originally going, and he can’t slow down
Since Doc Rivers’ comments were made directly after the game, he may not have seen a true replay of Griffin’s injury yet. Perhaps watching live action, he thought Ball had more to do with pushing Austin Rivers into Griffin than in reality. Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter, since Rivers isn’t alleging any misconduct from Ball, just describing an unfortunate basketball play.
In a chain reaction sort of way, I suppose it’s true that Ball’s turnover indirectly begun the events that ended up injuring Griffin. But if you want to play that game, why didn’t Rivers play better defense and keep Ball out of the lane? Why didn’t the Clippers score on the previous possession so they could set up their defense? You could keep going with this forever.
So to set the record straight: no, Ball didn’t injure or cause injury to Griffin. Let’s hope Griffin ends up being OK.
