• Tweet

• Tweet

LOS ANGELES — Danny Granger played solid. So did Darren Collison. Both had 30 or more points, but it wasn’t enough to stop Blake Griffin, who was a monster with 47 points and 14 rebounds, which led to the Los Angeles Clippers’ 114-107 victory over the Indiana Pacers.

With this, Indiana now drops to 16-22 while the Clippers improve to 15-25, now showing signs that they may have a chance at the playoffs. As for the Pacers, they still hold a seventh or eighth seed right now, which is in good standing, but if they keep playing mediocre down low, the playoff hopes will diminish.

Griffin was just absolutely unstoppable and amazing this game. Griffin got his 33rd double-double and made so many different kinds of shots. There was a bank here. He putback there. A turnaround jumper over there. Or a three-pointer by the corner. Griffin was lighting it up from all aspects of the court.

“It’s cool because all I hear is, ‘He can dunk and jumps high,’” Griffin said. “People question the other skills and as a basketball player, you take that personally.”

There is no need to question now. Griffin now holds the league-high of points scored in a game this season for an NBA player. He broke Monta Ellis’ mark of 46 points. Is there anyone that can now challenge him for the Rookie of the Year award? I don’t see John Wall doing this at all this season.

“Oh my goodness, he caught a feeling today,” Baron Davis said of Griffin. “He was unstoppable. We just kept feeding him and he kept producing. That keeps the defense off-balance.”

Indiana was holding on all the way up until the fourth quarter until they lost it. Griffin made one final post-up move to put L.A. up 114-107 with a minute to go. Nothing happened that minute. It was just sad, really.

“We came in and said, ‘We can’t let him do that again,” Granger said. “But we just couldn’t stop him.”

But Danny Granger did play great. He had 32 points and five assists. Darren Collison played solid, too, having 30 points and eight assists.

As for Roy Hibbert, he was just plain awful. He was extremely soft down low, as if it seemed like he was scared of Griffin. With that, he only had four points and four rebounds. He continues to get worse. Tyler Hansbrough couldn’t handle Griffin either, having only three points and two boards.

“It’s not a matter of it slipping away. It’s a matter of Griffin’s performance taking it away,” Pacers coach Jim O’Brien said. “It was a spectacular performance by Griffin. We couldn’t guard him. Most of his plays came on pick-and-rolls, so Roy [Hibbert] coming over to guard him was not a good option. Then we had Jeff [Foster], who’s our best defender, rotating to him and we had Danny rotating to him. But he was just too much for us to handle.”

It was Brandon Rush who had the most rebounds out of the starting five, with seven along with ten points. When Rush is out there getting all of the rebounds, you know there’s a problem with that. Jeff Foster led the team with eight rebounds along with having four points, James Posey had ten points and Paul George had six.

Eric Gordon played well for the Clippers, having 23 points and seven assists. Baron Davis had 14 points and twelve assists. Ike Diogu, a former Pacer, had nine points and six rebounds against his former team. Ryan Gomes added eight points.

This was supposed to be a win, in my opinion, for the Pacers. Now they’re 0-1 entering a tough road-trip. The Pacers need to win every game on the road, in my opinion. At least two is bare minimum. Facing Golden State next, there should be no excuses. But after the Warriors game, Indiana has some really tough challenges ahead with the Denver Nuggets and Portland Trail Blazers.

Come on Indiana, get yourselves together.