PLAYA VISTA, Calif. – While trade rumors swirl before the deadline, head coach Doc Rivers remains adamant Blake Griffin isn’t going anywhere.
After Griffin spoke Tuesday for the first time since his off-court incident, Rivers followed and reiterated that the Clippers aren’t interested in letting their star forward go anywhere.
“I’ve told you we’re not trading Blake,” Rivers said. “I guess everyone else wants to keep (saying) that, so we’ll let them do it. Not from us at all.”
Rivers said there’s nothing the team can do about rumors, even if they’re untrue and frustrating “when you know nothing’s going on.”
“We receive phone calls about every single player, honestly, but it does frustrate me when you hear all that speculation and all that stuff,” Rivers said. “It’s completely untrue.”
Rivers isn’t worried about what the trade talk has done to the team’s psyche and doesn’t believe it’s affected the players much. Rivers said “Blake and his people know what’s going on.”
“I think it’s affected ESPN and all the talk shows, hopefully given them ratings, if that’s what they’re looking for,” Rivers said. “But I don’t think it affected us much at all. This happens every year, unfortunately.”
Griffin was asked during his interview whether or not he believes his off-court situation has caused his name to pop up in trade rumors, to which he responded he’s the wrong person to ask.
“You probably have to ask the people that are in charge of that,” Griffin said. “I have been in trade talks before, so I don’t know.”
Rather than worry about that, Griffin’s primary focus is on rehabbing to get back on the court as soon as possible. Griffin said the past few weeks have been tough, and he wishes he could take the incident back.
But he knows he can’t, and now that he has his punishment, he said he’s trying to move forward and do the best he can from here on out.
“All of my teammates and everybody that I have talked to in the organization have been so positive and so helpful for me,” Griffin said. “Talking to each one, and apologizing to them, the theme has been that everybody makes mistakes. We have all done things we regret. Everybody has just said, ‘Get back healthy and come back and join us.’ That’s my goal, to get back healthy and come join us and keep doing the things that I was doing before.”
