Los Angeles Clippers forward Blake Griffin waits for a free throw during the second half of their NBA basketball game against the Boston Celtics in Boston, Massachusetts March 9, 2011. REUTERS/Brian Snyder (UNITED STATES – Tags: SPORT BASKETBALL)
Stymied by the NBA lockout, Blake Griffin is going to work for Will Ferrell instead.
This week, the Los Angeles Clippers All-Star forward is interning at Funny Or Die, the comedy website co-founded by Ferrell and Adam McKay. Griffin arrived at the site’s LA offices Tuesday to begin three days of work in video production.
He will help write, shoot, edit and act in several videos for the site. Funny Or Die quickly creates digital comedy videos, often with celebrity guest appearances.
Griffin said he’s a big comedy fan and an avid viewer of Funny Or Die. As an intern, he hopes to learn more about film production.
“Just to get an inside look at how things are run here is exciting to me,” Griffin said by phone Tuesday. “I don’t know what interns at Funny Or Die are like, but I’m about to find out, I guess.”
Anyone else looking forward to what he and the Funny Or Die crew come up with in the next three days? Anyone who enjoys “Between Two Ferns” is all right with me.
The NBA.com editors have been busy putting together Top 10 clips for the best players in the league. Here are the top plays from LeBron, Kobe and Blake Griffin.
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Do you miss Blake Griffin already? Check out this compilation of all of his dunks from the 2010-11 season. Don’t miss another of Blake’s dunks, get your Clippers tickets now!
This ad ran recently in the L.A. Times. Take a good look.
On the surface, Clippers owner Donald Sterling was trying to do something nice. He wanted to admit 1,000 “underprivileged children” free to the Clippers/Rockets game on March 2 in honor of Black History Month.
Only Black History Month is in February. Why is he celebrating it in March? And why is he associating “underprivileged kids” with Black History Month in the first place? Is he implying that all “underprivileged kids” are black? And how did the Staples Center employees know if a kid was “underprivileged” or not when he/she showed up for the game? By the color of his skin?
Los Angeles Clippers guard Baron Davis scores past Miami Heat center Zydrunas Ilgauskas and forward Chris Bosh in fourth quarter action in Los Angeles on January 12, 2011. The Clippers defeated the Heat 111-105. UPI/Jon SooHoo
The Los Angeles Clippers just pulled off the unthinkable: they managed to trade away Baron Davis’s untradeable contract. But it cost them a lottery pick.
An NBA source has confirmed to the Plain Dealer that the Cavaliers are about to send guard Mo Williams and forward Jamario Moon to the Los Angeles Clippers for guard Baron Davis and a No. 1 draft pick in the 2011 draft. That likely will be a lottery selection, although this draft is not considered to be particularly strong.
Below you’ll find a table with each player’s age, ’10-11 Player Efficiency Rating (via John Hollinger of ESPN) as well as their salaries for the next two seasons. Both contracts expire in 2013.
The Clippers are going to save approximately $11.7 million over the next two seasons with this trade. Even though Davis has a higher PER this season, they’re probably getting the better player in Mo Williams, who has battled injuries this year and hasn’t been the same since LeBron left last summer. I suspect he’ll be revitalized playing with Blake Griffin just as Davis was for the first half of the season.
When I first saw the headline about the Cavs trading for Davis, I chuckled, but with the Clippers’ first round pick included in the deal, it makes a lot more sense. The Cavs are basically buying the Clips’ #8 overall pick (which could end up being quite a bit higher or a little lower) in the 2011 draft for around $12 million. Side note: It just goes to show how out of whack the NFL rookie salaries are for the top picks because it’s almost impossible to find an NFL team that wants to trade into the upper part of the draft. And here the Cavs are spending $12 million for that right because the NBA rookie salary scale is a much better deal for teams drafting in the lottery.
There’s no telling how this trade is going to work out until we see what kind of player the Cavs get with the pick. One thing it does buy the Cavs is hope. Mo Williams wasn’t going to take this team anywhere and neither is Baron Davis. Williams has more value because he’s going to provide about the same production at a fraction of the cost, but by acquiring a lottery pick, the Cavs have another building block for their rebuilding project.
The short-term winner in this trade is definitely the Clips. Not only did they shed themselves of Davis and his terrible contract (which they gave him in the first place), they also freed up enough cash in the summer of 2012 to make a run at a max free agent, assuming the next collective bargaining agreement allows for this. There are already rumors swirling that Deron Williams could join the Clips that summer, and Chris Paul could be a free agent next summer as well.
One thing is certain — the Clips have to sign/acquire a great player to play alongside Blake Griffin before he has an opportunity to sign elsewhere. If they can sign Deron Williams/Chris Paul, re-sign Griffin, and can keep Eric Gordon in the fold as well, the Clippers will really be in business.
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