your own thoughts This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's Oct. 30 NBA Preview issue. Subscribe today!
On a muggy evening in Honolulu, site of Clippers training camp, five-time All-Star Blake Griffin shows me his mettle in the Waikiki Beach surf. He rides a wave with his stand-up paddleboard and yells at me to follow suit: "Keep moving those arms! If you go slow, you'll fall." I go slow. I fall. Still, Coach Griffin, 28, says I'm doing fine for a rookie, though he repeatedly credits my "low center of gravity" -- because 6-foot-10 forwards are jerks. I credit Griffin's patient but stern tutelage, leadership that will be tested this season as the Clippers seek to integrate a whopping nine new players while adjusting to the absence of Chris Paul, whose six-year term as Griffin's co-mayor of Lob City ended in June with his trade to the RocketsWe're soon joined in the water by several curious Clippers, including incumbents DeAndre Jordan and Wesley Johnson, who commandeer my board and paddle, respectively. The two instruments have little value when separated, but whatever -- Griffin, leader by land and sea, begins class. "What do you mean, start on my knees?" Jordan asks, just before his 6-11 frame folds into the ocean. Danilo Gallinari and Willie Reed splash him, for good measure. Griffin and I paddle away for some quiet, several hundred yards offshore, where he drops to his board, leans back and extends his legs, revealing a 2-inch scar along his right big toe, a souvenir from a May surgery to repair his plantar plate. We chat as the Pacific swallows the golden sunESPN: I hate you for dragging me to Hawaii. GRIFFIN: I'm really sorry. I figure
Al Jefferson Jersey we're here, so why not go out on the ocean, and probably the best way to enjoy it is paddleboarding. You're paddleboarding. I'm just kind of floating.Appreciate it. Yeah, I was happy. This is where I started my career, and it just made sense to stay. When I got here, they'd just won 19 games, and there was the Clippers Curse -- like, all their first-round picks were busts. We broke through that one, then it's like, "They'll never make the playoffs." Now it's, "They'll never get past the second round." So it's just the next curse challenge. I think everybody's ideal is to have a wonderful career with one franchise, like Kobe and Tim Duncan My first time, I fell in, like, five times. I don't know if it was because I'm so tall or I just got bad balance, but it wasn't easy for me. I told
Al Jefferson Jersey you, you have a lower center of gravity, so it's easier. Stop calling me short, bro. [Laughs] But you look good out
Al Jefferson Jersey here. Your attire is good too, classic athletic.We'll get up and down the floor. Having such a younger team with a lot of really athletic guys who can put the ball on the floor, make plays and score for themselves, running and being more aggressive defensively-those will be keys for us. For me, I'll just fill the voids, whether it's playmaking, scoring or rebounding. Which part of your game must take the biggest leap? I'll have to become a better passer and more of a go-to guy down the stretch. And I have to expand my range to 3. It's a weapon that I need to have. As long as I'm making a decent amount of them to put pressure on teams and space the floor for us, I'm doing my job. To top the Warriors, contenders are in an arms race to form superteams. Now that the Clippers are down a superstar, are you OK with calling this a transition year ahead of 2018 free agency? Nah, I don't look at it as a transition year. What have we done in the last five, six years? Nothing. We got to the second round. This year we expect to make the playoffs. That's our goal. From there, anything can happen. We can at least accomplish what we did last year Honestly, I wasn't about to be shirtless on camera next to Blake Griffin. You would've been fine. Looks like you work out. What do you love about paddleboarding? What I love most is being in the
http://www.officialbaseballgiants.com/Deion_Sanders_Jerseymiddle of nowhere
http://www.philadelphiaeagles.us.com/WOMENS-DALLAS-THOMAS-JERSEY.html in your own thoughts, like meditating. I've also done paddleboard yoga -- you go into the marina in LA, toss an anchor and do yoga poses on the water. I just like to be alone sometimes and think. This is the best place to do it
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