Where: Mastercard Center in Beijing, China
When: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 @ 4:30AM
TV: NBA TV
Radio: KFWB News Talk 980
Set your DVR's (or VCR's if you still use them). This one airs at 4:30am (PST), but it will re-air at 11:30am and 7:30pm.
Clippers Projected Starting 5
Bledsoe | Green | Butler | Griffin | Jordan
- Key Reserves
Crawford | Hill | Barnes | Odom
Heat Projected Starting 5
Cole | Wade| Battier | James | Bosh
- Key Reserves
Allen | Miller | Lewis | Pittman
Inactive List:
- Chauncey Billups (Left Achilles), Chris Paul (Right Thumb) and Trey Thompkins (Bone Bruise) are out.
- Joel Anthony, Mario Chalmers and Jarvis Vanardo are out.
Clippers Media Day in Beijing (Video)
Pregame Report“I’m really looking forward to playing here and playing front of the crowd and seeing what the atmosphere is like,” Griffin said. “I’ve never played overseas so I’m really looking forward to the experience.”Another first-time visitor to China, Jamal Crawford said “the stage” of the event makes it important. “We’re honored that [China] allowed us to come here,” he added. “The Miami Heat are a championship team, and we aspire to be champions, so I think you’ll see a high-level basketball game here tomorrow night.”“The exhibition games we’re not game planning as much, we’re not going over personnel for the other team as much,” Griffin said. “But it’s one of those things where we want to work on our game and offensively and defensively work on our schemes and our coverages to help us down the road.”
Head Coach Vinny Del Negro agreed with Griffin’s assessment that at this point in the preseason it’s not about the opponent as much as it is building a foundation heading into the season.
“The last few exhibition games when we get our whole team together, other than obviously Chauncey [Billups], we’ll get a better feel, get some rotations down, get some guys healthy. We’ve put a lot of work in the last week or so. It’s a building process for us and you can’t shortcut it.”
Eric Patten, Clippers.com
