DeShawn Stevenson Was Sending Message to Blake Griffin With Flagrant Foul

Blake Griffin was having himself a grand old time dunking all over the hapless New Jersey Nets yesterday, so DeShawn Stevenson took it upon himself to do something about it. This, of course, changed nothing as the Nets still lost. From the Star-Ledger: “The Nets’ DeShawn Stevenson admitted his flagrant foul on Blake Griffin was an attempt to send a message to the Los Angeles Clippers’ power forward after Griffin had been pushing the Nets around and throwing down dunks at will in the first half. ‘He was dunking all over the place,’ Stevenson said of Griffin, whom he bumped from behind when Griffin went up for another one of those lob passes with 3:22 remaining in the second quarter of today’s 101-91 loss. ‘I didn’t try to foul him hard, but when he’s up in the air like that there was no way I could give a foul but to bring him down.’ Stevenson said he wasn’t trying to hurt Griffin, last year’s rookie of the year and Slam Dunk champ. The Nets seemed to appreciate the effort. ‘I think it just showed that you can’t just let (Griffin) dunk all over us,’ Deron Williams said. ‘There were a couple plays where it was just one dribble and dunking on us and there’s no help. Things like that don’t happen with playoff teams.'”