After a hot start to the Blake Griffin era, the Pistons have dropped two in a row to the Clippers and, most recently, the lowly Hawks. Their 118-115 loss in Atlanta on Sunday flew mostly under the radar, but for a team with playoff aspirations that’s the kind of game they can’t afford to drop.
Playing at the same time as Cavs-Celtics helped their disappointing loss stay out of the spotlight, but one moment in particular deserves to be highlighted for the comedic relief it provided.
Unsurprisingly, the man providing the moment of levity was Griffin as he lobbed a basketball off of Hawks point guard Dennis Schröder’s head late in the second quarter. Griffin was assessed a technical because you can’t go tossing basketballs off of people’s domes, even if it is kind of funny.
Blake Griffin gets a tech after hitting Dennis Schroder in the head with the ball 🤔 pic.twitter.com/BTvX5795wB
— Def Pen Hoops (@DefPenHoops) February 11, 2018
It’s such a gentle toss, which is why it’s funny. Griffin played it off like he was trying to throw the ball to the referee, but Schröder was clearly between him and the referee and as a professional athlete you lose the ability to say you didn’t mean to throw the ball right there. Your job is literally to be very good at tossing a basketball an exact distance, so that excuse falls flat.
Schröder understandably wasn’t pleased, but nothing escalated as the ref quickly stepped in, Griffin quickly offered an apology and, just in general, it wasn’t that hard of a throw to make someone really mad.
