Blake Griffin, forward of the Los Angeles Clippers, would like to apologize to fans for what happened in Toronto. For the entirety of last season, actually. And he has done so in the form of an open letter that sets out his goals for the team’s upcoming year as well as thanking Clippers fans for sticking together amid Lakers hegemony.
Going into what is now his eighth year with the franchise, he notes that they have come a long way, from being a largely-ignored second-tier team to one with a large enough fan base that he has people to answer to for not winning more often.
“It has been really cool to be part of a team that went from barely registering with people less than a decade ago to being one that people respect. We haven’t achieved our ultimate goal, but I hope we’ve changed the perception of the Clippers. At the very least, we’re worth hating now,” he writes.
Being hated is something he and his teammates apparently have gotten pretty used to when it comes to Lakers fans. He tells a story of how any time a Clippers player is invited to throw out a pitch at a Dodgers game, teammates tell each other to prepare to be deluged with booing—even if they bring their cute little kids with them to the mound (which, come on, sports fans, that just seems rude). But Griffin, for his part, still says he prefers that over when he first arrived in L.A. and people didn’t even expend the energy to boo.
Griffin’s letter appears on The Players’ Tribune, a website launched in 2014 by Derek Jeter to allow professional athletes to write first-person experiences and communicate directly with fans in essays, video series and podcasts. Griffin is a senior editor of the site and has been filing commentaries since the site began.
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