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Trey Thompkins is a Clipper and he has feelings

The Clippers had a very full practice today, but in fact they did not have "everyone" as the entire roster except for injured second year forward Trey Thompkins participated.

By Steve Perrin
USA TODAY Sports

Poor Trey Thompkins. There have been multiple reports that the Clippers practiced with their full complement of players today for the first time all season. Only problem is, second year forward Trey Thompkins and his bruised knee are back in L.A. while the team is in Florida preparing for tomorrow's game against the Miami Heat. Thompkins didn't even accompany the team on this trip, but that didn't stop Madelyn Burke from tweeting this:

Or Arash Markazi from writing this:

For the first time this season, the Los Angeles Clippers had all of their players in uniform and practicing Thursday, and could possibly have them all in uniform and playing Friday night against the Miami Heat if there are no setbacks.

It had to especially sting Thompkins to have Burke, who works for the team after all, ignore the fact that technically he should be included in "everyone". But even after one of her followers asked Burke about Thompkins, she did the same thing in a separate tweet a couple of hours later:

Turns out "as a whole" and "everyone" and "all of their players" all mean more or less the same thing, and they all imply that everyone who is employed by the Clippers to play basketball was practicing today. And since Thompkins wasn't there, it's simply not true.

Now, one could fix the factual error by saying something along the lines of "everyone who matters", or less dickishly, "everyone in the rotation". But it's unlikely that either of those would make Thompkins feel any better.

The fact remains that the Clippers had their fullest practice of the season today, and that having everyone except for Thompkins is essentially the same thing as being at full strength. The NBA allows teams to have 13 players in uniform for each game, but the Clippers have not had more than 12 dressed for any game this season. If everyone on the team, including Thompkins, were fully healthy, it would be Thompkins on the inactive list at game time, so if the other 13 (including the recently injured Chauncey Billups, Blake Griffin, Jamal Crawford and Chris Paul) are in uniform against Miami Friday or possibly against New York Sunday morning, then in fact the Clippers will finally have a full game day contingent for the first time this season.

On a more serious note, Markazi ranks the injured players as follows from most likely to least likely to play in Miami: Billups then Griffin then Crawford then Paul. With both the Miami game and the New York game on national TV, there's little question that NBA Commissioner David Stern and Disney CEO Bob Iger want them all to play, but hopefully they're not rushing back too soon.

Regardless, the long wait for Trey to get healthy goes on. He remains a member of the team, contrary to recent reports.

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