The Los Angeles Clippers played well enough without Blake Griffin to fool the rest of us for a while, and their 103-98 comeback win against the Oklahoma City Thunder showed they may have even fooled themselves.
Remember, before the stunning victory, Chris Paul told Sam Amick of USA Today: "We can't win a championship without Blake. We're playing for a championship, and there's no championship without Blake Griffin."
The thinking behind Paul's comments is hard to deny. Griffin is a superstar—one good enough to dominate a first-round series against the then-defending champion San Antonio Spurs last year. It's perfectly reasonable to argue L.A.'s ceiling is somewhere in the sub-contender range without him.
It's just that so much of what the Clips have done in his absence suggests otherwise.
The win against OKC improved the Clippers' record since Griffin went down (originally with a quad injury, later exacerbated by a broken hand that will also cost him a four-game suspension once he's healthy) to 23-7. That mark, along with the league's third-b ...
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Article written by Grant Hughes