The secret tunnels at Staples Center are suddenly not-so secret anymore after Houston Rockets guard Chris Paul used them to access his former team’s locker room on Monday night. The Rockets locker room invasion made huge headlines and caused a lot of laughs, but also raised a lot of questions.
What exactly are these tunnels? Why are they there? And why can Chris Paul just roll through them without consequence if he has a problem with Blake Griffin and Austin Rivers? Such questions and chatter online prompted another former Clipper, J.J. Redick, to wonder if he needed to hold an “emergency podcast” to explain how the tunnels in the Los Angeles venue work.
https://twitter.com/JJRedick/status/953283725424553984
And retweet led to quote retweet led to Jared Dudley mentioning a very interesting story about Stephen Curry once using the tunnels in 2014 to reach the Clippers locker room himself.
https://twitter.com/JaredDudley619/status/953307283600982016
So it’s clearly not the first time an opponent has snuck into the Clippers locker room for one reason or another. Just how many secret passages are in the Staples Center anyway? Do they show up on the blueprints or did Steve Ballmer build a bunch of hidden passages so he can abscond like a reclusive billionaire?
It took a bit of prodding, but Dudley eventually did reveal the story. Turns out it could have been an altercation but turned out to be a misunderstanding: Curry thought the Clippers were talking trash about the Dubs after they beat them in the postseason.
Someone in the clippers org was screaming and cussing in that secret tunnel about them.. they thought it was the clipper players doing it.. just a heated series.. no fighting like usual but there was an altercation https://t.co/08eMXnT4sU
— Jared Dudley (@JaredDudley619) January 16, 2018
Dudley laughed and said “yes” when asked if the police were called about this, too. But he could have been sarcastic here. It’s difficult to tell, but what’s clear is that the Clippers really need to beef up their security. Seems like just about anyone can wander in if they know the right book to pull out of that nondescript bookcase over there.
