Serge Ibaka Says Groin Chop Wasn’t Meant to Hurt Blake Griffin


According to OKC Thunder big man Serge Ibaka, he may have crotch-chopped Blake Griffin on Sunday, but it wasn’t done with bad intentions (and teammate Kendrick Perkins had very little sympathy for Blake). We’ll likely find out today if the NBA believes Serge’s claim or not. Per the Oklahoman: “He hit my hands away,’ Ibaka said. ‘He’s strong, so when he grabs you, your jersey or whatever, and you try to defend yourself and rebound. So maybe you can do some move, not to hurt, (but) just to get good position, but then something happens where you get hurt in the paint. It’s not anything where I want to try to hurt him. I’m not that kind of person. I just try to play hard, and that’s it. I just tried to play hard. I really don’t care if someone is dirty or not, that’s not my problem. His game was intense. We all were complaining to the referees (about) some dirty stuff. It’s basketball. We just played. If you can see the replay, you can see he grabbed my jersey first so I wanted to try to defend myself, (but) not to hurt him.’ Thunder center Kendrick Perkins had his own take. ‘I didn’t see it to where it was like that flagrant,’ Perkins said. ‘He (Griffin) took (Ibaka’s) arm and knocked him down. The dude (Griffin) is known for flopping anyway, so that’s what it is. I was (angry). The (Clippers’) reaction after that was kind of like Serge Ibaka against Blake Griffin. He (Ibaka) ain’t going to get the benefit of (the doubt) or what’s really happening down there. You ain’t seeing all the stuff that other people are doing. Serge ends up getting the bad end of the stick. I didn’t like the whole thing — period. I thought it should’ve been a double-foul.’ Griffin said: ‘I guess it’s a chippy game like that every time we play. We’re both pretty physical teams with physical bigs. There was a lot of pushing and all that going on down low.'”