LA Clippers superstar forward Blake Griffin is on the cover of this month’s GQ, and he opens up about his team’s rise, dabbling in comedy, religious views, fatherhood, the Donald Sterling nightmare, life after the NBA, and his reputation around the L.
Griffin explains why he gets into so many tussles on the court, and wonders if being on TV so much might negatively affect his opponents and critics:
Why do people seem to get into it with you so much on the court? “I like to play physical, and I’m a big guy, and I think sometimes—maybe sometimes I am pushing somebody and I don’t realize how hard I’m pushing them. And then they do it back, and it’s kind of like, “Jeez!” You know what I mean? It looks worse because it’s kind of almost like their reaction to me. And then at the same time, sometimes I’m like, okay, maybe it’s just because I’m big and I play physical.”
What was it that Klay Thompson said before the playoff series? That you were a “bull in a china shop”? “Bull in a china shop, yeah. But the thing about that is, it depends on who you are. If you’re the bull, being a bull in a china shop is not a bad thing. If you’re the china, it’s a bad thing. So I want to be the bull. I don’t want to be the china.”
Does off-the-court stuff factor into it? Like the fact that you do commercials? “Probably. For some people, I don’t know, probably. I mean, when I see a guy doing a commercial, I don’t care. It’s not like I see Kevin Durant in a commercial, I’m like, “Psshh, this guy!” […] But you guys are in a rarefied category. “Maybe. Yeah, I guess. But even, you know, as a high schooler, as a college kid, my first year, I wasn’t—seeing guys on commercials—being like, “What’s this dude doing?” You know, that’s just not really my personality. But I feel like some people do. It probably does have an effect.”
