Los Angeles Clipper: Who is Blake Griffin’s backup?

With the Los Angeles Clippers losing All-Star power forward Blake Griffin for the rest of the season, who steps up to replace the Clippers front court star?

The Los Angeles Clippers had themselves a very bad time in Game 4 of their first round series versus the Portland Trail Blazers on Monday night.

Not only did Los Angeles lose to Portland to even the serious at two games apiece, they lost their two best players to significant injuries.

Point guard Chris Paul broke a bone in his shooting hand and will miss at least six weeks. Power forward Blake Griffin re-aggravated his quad tear and will miss the rest of the season.

While Clippers head coach Doc Rivers will likely use his son Austin Rivers and NBA Sixth Man of the Year Jamal Crawford to try to counterbalance the brutal loss of Paul, who has to step up in the Clippers’ front court to replace Griffin?

That would be the recently acquired Jeff Green having to try to fill Griffin’s massive shoes. Green spent his first 53 games of the 2015-16 NBA season with the Memphis Grizzlies before playing his last 27 with Los Angeles, starting in 10 of those games.

Green averaged 10.9 points per game, 3.4 rebounds per game, and 1.5 assists per game primarily coming off the Clippers’ bench as an important rotational player. He averaged 26.3 minutes per Clippers contest, shot 42.7% from the field and a respectable 32.5% from three-point range.

Green is capable of playing both small forward and power forward at 6’9″, 235 pounds. His presence in the starting lineup for the Clippers would mean that Los Angeles has to shamelessly play small ball in their tight series with the Trail Blazers.

While Portland is very much a guard-centric basketball team, not having Griffin in the starting lineup playing key playoff minutes is to the detriment of the Clippers advancing to the Western Conference Semifinals again in 2016.

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