GRIFFIN SURGERY ON THE TABLE
Clippers star forward would be out 3 to 6 weeks if he undergoes right-knee procedure.
WASHINGTON — The Clippers are deciding whether Blake Griffin will undergo arthroscopic surgery in his right knee.
The surgery would be to remove loose bodies in the knee, which can be small fragments of cartilage or bone. The recovery time for the surgery would be three to six weeks.
Griffin, who leads the Clippers with 21 points per game, missed a Dec. 10 win over the New Orleans Pelicans because of knee soreness. Before that game, after announcing Griffin was out, Clippers Coach Doc Rivers said the soreness was “nothing big.” Griffin did return to the lineup two days later, and has not missed any of the three games since.
The seventh-year power forward played in just 35
games last season because of injuries to his left quad and right hand. But he’s played in 26 of the Clippers’ 28 games this season, and there appeared to be no indication he was hurting Sunday, when he put up 26 points and seven assists in a 117-110 loss to the Washington Wizards.
Scoring was not the issue for Griffin and the Clippers at the Verizon Center. But the team’s defense was another matter.
The porous defense began to spring enormous leaks in the decisive fourth quarter, the holes opening far too wide for them to plug on a day they faced Washington shooting guard Bradley Beal, who punctured them all game long.
Beal riddled the Clippers with 41 points, one shy of his career high.
The Wizards shot 53.1% from the field, 52.5% from three-point range.
But it was the fourth quarter that was the most telling.
A halfhearted defensive effort by the Clippers resulted in the Wizards’ shooting 80% from the field in the final 12 minutes.
The Wizards were 12 for 15 from the field in the fourth, and they scored 32 points seemingly at will, snapping the Clippers’ four-game winning streak in the process.
“I think us as a team, we’ve got to talk about it because we’ve lost confidence in our defense,” said Chris Paul, who had 13 points and 12 assists. “And I think a lot of that starts with me, being on the ball. But no way should we have lost this game.”
The Clippers had put themselves in position to earn the win by building an 11-point lead in the third.
But Beal became a force the Clippers were unable to contain. By the time Beal was done scoring 18 points in the third, the Clippers’ lead was down to two points at the end of the quarter.
“Our defense was not our defense today,” said DeAndre Jordan, the Clippers’ defensive savant.
“Brad was on fire. I can’t take anything away from him. He’s a hell of a basketball player. We weren’t physical with him at all. He created a lot of the contact and initiated the physicality tonight and got a lot of open shots the way he wanted to get his shots. But that’s on all of us.”
Still, with the Clippers going back on the attack in the fourth, they built a seven-point lead midway through the quarter. Then Markieff Morris went on the attack against the Clippers’ relenting defense, scoring 12 of his 23 points in the fourth.
By the time the Wizards had taken a six-point lead late in the game, Rivers argued too vehemently and was ejected after back-toback technical fouls with 1 minute 6 seconds left.
So now the Clippers (20-8), who once had the best record in the NBA at 14-2, have fallen to fourth in the Western Conference behind Golden State, San Antonio and Houston.
And it’s all because of a defense that has been lost somewhere.
“I don’t know if it’s fatigue or if it’s just a lack of communication, but we’re just not sort of anticipating that next action, the next thing,” Clippers guard J.J. Redick said. “If you are going to be a top-five defense like we aspire to be, you have to all sort of be linked and everybody doing the same thing and having each other’s back.”