When Blake Griffin got hurt during Olympic training camp and was forced to sit out the London Games, there had to be some worry that it might affect his NBA season for the Los Angeles Clippers as well.
But Griffin says there is nothing to worry about and there are no lasting effects from the surgery on the medial meniscus in his left knee.
"If camp started tomorrow, I'd be ready to go," Griffin said Tuesday. "I could go now if I needed to. The surgery wasn't one of those things that took a long time (to recover from). It was just a matter of getting my strength back and we really took our time with it. I could have been back even earlier than that. I just needed to get the swelling out of the knee. That was the biggest battle. There's nothing that needs time to repair or heal. It was just reducing the swelling and getting the strength back in my leg and once I got that, I was out on the court every day."
Of course, training camps do not start for a whole month, but Griffin is clearly ready to be back on the floor.
The Clippers’ offseason moves have been overshadowed by their same-city rivals, the L.A. Lakers, but they should make them a better team. Adding Jamal Crawford, Lamar Odom and Grant Hill along with the return of Chauncey Billups makes them a contender in the Western Conference, but they would lose a lot of talent if Griffin were out for an extended period of time.
Griffin’s game is based mostly on his ability to jump out of the gym, so he has to hope that the surgery on his knee, whether it feels great or not, did not take away some of his leap. If I am Blake Griffin, I would be using the time recovering from the surgery to stop doing spectacular dunks in practice and get up a few hundred jump shots a day. Just some friendly advice.
Image: NBAdunks.org
