Yikes: Apparently Blake Griffin Broke His Hand In A Fight With A Member Of The Clippers Equipment Staff

#Clippers forward Blake Griffin injured his right hand after hitting a member of the team's equipment staff during an argument in Toronto

— Michael Eaves (@michaeleaves) January 26, 2016

The altercation started in a restaurant. It proceeded outside where Griffin hit the equipment staffer multiple times. #Clippers

— Michael Eaves (@michaeleaves) January 26, 2016

Okay, so this isn't exactly the greatest news to ever come out for a team that constantly find themselves in turmoil. No doubt the Clippers -and Blake Griffin specifically- are going to get run through the ringer by the media, and deservingly so. Let's just say their public relations team is probably working a little bit of overtime with week. You never want a player involved in a physical altercation with a staff member, and you CERTAINLY don't want him breaking his hand in the process. This one is definitely going to take a bit of reputation damage control. With that said, when I saw this story come out I said to myself "why?". That's when I saw this...

For what it's worth: Griffin is good friends with this staff member. They routinely hang out off the court at home and on the road.

— Arash Markazi (@ArashMarkazi) January 26, 2016

...and it all made perfect sense. Listen, I know this reasoning isn't exactly going to fly with the beat reporters, but that doesn't mean there's no logic to it. Blake Griffin and this guy were friends. Good friends, in fact. What man hasn't had to throw fists with someone close to them to get rid of a certain amount of animosity that has built up over time. I have gotten into multiple fights with some of my best friends. That doesn't mean there was some irreconcilable difference. It just means that sometimes people need to take their frustrations out on people they care about. The real shame about this scuffle is that it has long term ramifications. I bet Blake Griffin was ready to have a beer with this dude before he even realized his hand was broken. I don't know what transpired. Maybe the equipment manager made a joke, or multiple jokes, at the expense of Blake Griffin. Maybe it was a product of the amount of time they spend with each other -at home or on the road- over the course of the year. After all, familiarity breeds contempt, and it's safe to say that basketball teams and their staff members get pretty goddamn familiar while constantly traveling with each other 7-8 months out of the year. Maybe Blake Griffin has gotten a little irritable while trying to return from injury. Who knows? I do know that this is going to be spun as a fight between a professional athlete and a person hired to help him better perform his job. I do know that the equipment manager is going to be labeled the victim, and Blake Griffin is going to have to assume the role of the bad guy. However, I also know that that rhetoric is probably flawed, because by all accounts this was a bout between friends.

I guess the only good news -if you want to call it that- is the Clippers have proven to be a pretty damn good basketball team without Blake Griffin on the floor. That doesn't mean that this is something they are comfortable with and it's not going to silence the critics in the least, but there aren't many teams that could afford to lose their All Star power forward -for a reason this dumb- and not completely collapse.