Clippings from Blake Griffin Day

Since the question of whether the Blake Griffin open work out was a good thing or a bad thing has come up, and since a big part of it is the desire to get positive stories written, I thought I'd go ahead and collect all the stories I could find for everyone.  You can judge for yourselves whether it was a good move for the organization (hint, it was).

• Clippers.com (this link includes excerpts from the Q&A sesssions)
  
• Ralph Lawler's blog on Clippers.com
• Lisa Dillman, LA Times
• Kelly Dwyer, Ball Don't Lie
• Ken Berger, CBS Sports
• Howard Beck, New York Times
• Solange Reyner, AP
• Lang Whitaker, SLAM Online
• Daily News Blog Post
• Pedro Moura for the Daily News (this is the intern I was talking to, likely his first byline - congrats Pedro)
• Michael Lee, Washington Post

Note that David Aldridge, Ric Bucher and Dave McMenamin were all there, so we can expect a few more stories to come in as well.  I'm sure there are others still.

We talked about the advantage of getting the national media into the new training facility.  If you doubt that as a positive factor for the team, check out Lang Whitaker's take:

When we rounded the corner and saw the facility, Mike [Lee, of the Washington Post] nearly swerved off the road. For years the Clips scrimmaged at a small local college, but this place, which opened a few months back, was huge and gorgeous, with a big LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS on the side of the building and a blinking LED readout on the front that read "The Clippers Welcome Blake Griffin."

Mike and I beat the media shuttle to the facility, so the Clippers’ PR staff gave us an impromptu tour, from the huge video/tech center to a pool with an underwater treadmill that guys can rehab injuries on. The weight room was cavernous, and we even caught the coaches locker room, with a towel embroidered with each coach’s initials hanging in their lockers.

So far, the stories have been much more positive than negative, despite the somewhat surreal atmosphere and the fact that Griffin didn't shoot well.  So I think you have to consider it a PR coup for the sometimes PR challenged Clippers.