Pau Gasol: Clippers Were ‘Flopping a Little Too Much’

For the second consecutive preseason game, the Clippers beat the Lakers, and continued to get under their skin. According to Pau Gasol, the Lakers were mostly upset that their Staples Center neighbors were getting away with flops (*cough* Blake Griffin *cough*). From ESPN: “It was just a preseason game, so the result of the Los Angeles Clippers’ 108-103 win on Wednesday hardly mattered. Yet the Staples Center co-tenants renewed their rivalry with all the contentiousness of a playoff game. Things got a little chippy like they almost always seem to do when these teams meet. The physical play boiled over when Matt Barnes was called for a flagrant 1 foul for pushing Blake Griffin to the floor with 6:48 remaining in the third quarter. ‘I thought we had some pretty good fouls. I don’t know about the [flagrant], I got to go back and watch the replay,’ said Lakers coach Mike Brown. ‘Hopefully we won’t get flagrant fouls. What that does is gives them free shots and the ball back, but I thought we had some good, solid, hard fouls which is what we should do because we’re deep. So, if a guy fouls out, we got another guy that can step in and play.’ Barnes left the locker room before speaking to the media and declined an interview request as he was walking out of the arena, but Lakers forward Pau Gasol offered an explanation for all the hard fouls. ‘I think we were upset that they were flopping a little too much,’ said Gasol. Griffin seemed to draw the ire of the most Lakers as he received hard contact from Barnes, Gasol and Josh McRoberts on different occasions.”