The Clippers announced Tuesday that forward Blake Griffin will miss 4-6 weeks with a hand injury suffered when he punched an equipment staffer.
The fact that one of the Clippers’ best players attacked a member of the organization does not make the team look particularly good, but it’s absolutely hilarious in the context of this tweet posted to its Twitter account Monday morning, hours before the incident.
Promoted Tweet from yesterday looks like a disaster now @LAClippers pic.twitter.com/UW5vPAYqNo
— warriorsworld (@warriorsworld) January 26, 2016
Here we’ve got Blake Griffin, the man in question, which is fist balled as if he’s ready to punch someone, with three different slogans about team unity. “Come together for game time,” “It’s time to unite” and “Together we will” are just cheesy catchphrases under normal circumstances, but in the context of Griffin punching people in the organization, they’re wonderfully ironic.
Of course, nothing about this is funny for the Clippers (particularly not that equipment staff member), who will now be without one of their stars for much of the second half of the season as they battle for playoff positioning. L.A. currently stands fourth in the Western Conference, three games ahead of fifth-place Memphis and four and a half ahead of seventh-place Houston.
In recent years the Clippers have become a functional organization and moved out of league laughingstock territory, but every once in a while something happens to remind you that no matter what they’re still The Clippers.
