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Clippers' Blake Griffin healthy and hungry to compete

Griffin has been on the court conducting basketball workouts since the end of July, saying he’s cleared any mental hurdles because of how intense those workouts have been.

“My workouts, I’d say, there’s all this new equipment and all these new staff members and we do all this tracking and stuff. My workouts have always been a heavier load than games. Going on back-to-back days, playing pick-up, doing workouts, doing weights it’s more than any game or practice,” Griffin said. “I think the mental hurdle is passed.”

Griffin has embraced the Clippers’ attempts to use biomedical information, already citing the data generated by the player tracking devices.

“You can see your jump load, your stopping and braking,” he said. “The depth of the amount of knowledge you can attain now is crazy. It’s all useful.”

Dan Woike, OC Register

Competition at small forward is 'wide open'

“It’s the first day. I think that job is wide open,” Clippers coach Doc Rivers said. “I’d say Luc, Alan, Wes would be the three, but we may go small. Like I said last year, and didn’t follow through on it, that position will change a lot. Last year, we ran a lot with the small lineup, three guards, and we may do that to start games.”

If the Clippers go small, either Austin Rivers or Raymond Felton could find themselves playing with the first unit, a look Doc Rivers likes because it relieves some pressure from Paul.

“When you play Austin with that group, he can guard a better offensive player and CP can do what the rest of the league does – their point guards never guard the other point guard,” Doc Rivers said. “We want to do that a lot this year. We want to put a lineup where CP doesn’t have to guard the best guy. Raymond can do that, and Austin can do that.”

Dan Woike, OC Register

Blake Griffin Healthy, Hungry After Long Road To Recovery

When Blake Griffin couldn’t run this summer, he got his cardio with swimming and yoga. When he couldn’t go through his normal basketball workouts in early July, he got on the court and put up hundreds of free throws every day.

“I wasn’t able to do basketball as early as I would’ve liked to,” Griffin said. “But I was able to do free throws, so I did 200-400 free throws every day. By July, all of July, I did that. In August, I was able to start doing actual basketball workouts.”

But it wasn’t until the end of that month when the sense of excitement, elation and relief reached a peak. Griffin went in for his latest checkup and saw just how far he’d come.

“It just looks like a brand new tendon,” Griffin said, after seeing the results with his doctor. “No tendinitis, no anything…The doctor was like, ‘This is probably as healthy as your tendon’s been since high school,’ just because of the nature of how much basketball we have to play.”

Rowan Kavner, Clippers.com

MrHill wrote:I do have question for one of you guys...I don't know how factual this is, and I normally take certain items with a grain of salt, but I was reading another Clipper message board, and someone there mentioned that Mike Smith's contract with the team and/or Fox wasn't renewed. I haven't heard or seen any news to the contrary or even validating it. Have you guys heard anything?