The Los Angeles Clippers have suspended star Blake Griffin four games without pay and will withhold salary for one additional game for striking a team employee, the team announced Tuesday afternoon. The Clippers will donate the salary Griffin will lose over the course of the five games to a charity focusing on disadvantaged youth in Los Angeles. So the first question that may come to mind is what took so long?
The incident Griffin is being suspended for occurred on January 23, according to the team statement. Word of the incident caught fire just days later (we covered it initially on January 26, three days later). This was not even the first time Griffin has been involved in some sort of altercation, as we noted his 2014 Las Vegas nightclub incident previously. We poked fun at the awkwardness of an image shared on the Clippers’ Twitter account later that day. The NBA got involved two days later with an investigation. And then nothing happened for the next 12 days?
We’ll give the Clippers and the NBA an excuse for this past Sunday, as that was Super Bowl Sunday and everybody wanted to be able to watch the game, but what took so long in addressing a player roughing up a team employee? Does this not seem like something that could have or should have been addressed a little bit quicker? The Clippers have played eight games over two weeks since news of Griffin striking a team employee broke.
It’s good the NBA stepped in to do some investigating, and perhaps that is what caused the delay in punishment as the NBA wanted to make sure as much information could be gathered from multiple sources and thus avoid the possibility this would be swept under the rug by the Clippers (I’m not accusing the Clippers of wnating to do that, to be clear).
[Clippers]
