Blake Griffin, the high-flying forward who helped usher in a new era of relevance for the Los Angeles Clippers, recently opened up about some deeply uncomfortable moments from his early days in the NBA, all tied to disgraced former Clippers owner Donald Sterling.
Appearing on The Adam Friedland Show, Griffin recounted bizarre and inappropriate behavior from Sterling during the early 2010s, when Griffin was just 19 or 20 years old and had just been drafted No. 1 overall. What should have been a dream beginning for a young star turned into a parade of cringeworthy and invasive moments orchestrated by a man who treated his players more like property than people.
“He would come in with his crew, you know, it’d be like 10 to 12 people with him. They’d come in the locker room, we’d all have towels on and one time after a game, he came up to me.”
“I’m in just a towel, and he comes over and grabs my arm. He’s got all his people in there and he goes, ‘Let’s hear it for our number one star! Hip-hip’ and he raises my arm, and everybody, all these people go, ‘Hooray!’ And I’m standing there, holding a towel, going, ‘Hip-hip hooray.'”
“He did it three times, ‘Hip-hip hooray…'”
“One time, at one of his white parties, I had to go, like right when I got drafted, he walked me around, and he kept saying, ‘His mom, no, his mom’s white. His mom’s white. His mom’s white. It’s fine.'”
“And he would have people, he was like, ‘Feel his stomach, feel his abs, feel his arms.’ I was like 19 years old. My boss was touching me.”
Sterling’s behavior toward players had long been the stuff of whispered rumors, but Griffin’s anecdotes and similar stories from other Clippers like Baron Davis and Cuttino Mobley paint a fuller picture of just how toxic the environment had become.
Mobley once said Sterling would enter the locker room while players were undressed and stare as if he was “at the zoo.” Baron Davis called the Sterling era “a bad soap opera in prison.” Dominique Wilkins even claimed Sterling once had a “naked woman jump out of a cake” at a team party.
Sterling’s racism and controlling behavior ultimately led to his downfall. In 2014, a leaked audio recording of Sterling making racist remarks to his then-girlfriend V. Stiviano led to public outrage. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver responded swiftly, banning Sterling for life, fining him $2.5 million, and forcing the sale of the Clippers.
Steve Ballmer’s $2 billion purchase of the team marked a new era. For Griffin, it meant finally playing under an owner who valued and respected his players. Though Blake retired in 2023, his impact on the Clippers is permanent, and so too, unfortunately, are the memories of a boss who crossed the line far too often.
