“My boss was touching me” – Blake Griffin makes light of Donald Sterling’s bizarre behavior in the Los Angeles Clippers locker room originally appeared on Basketball Network.
Former Los Angeles Clippers star Blake Griffin burst into the NBA spotlight as the No.1 overall pick in 2009, fresh off winning the Naismith College Player of the Year award for the Oklahoma Sooners.
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Clippers fans were excited to welcome the high-flying Okie. Their owner, the now-infamous Donald Sterling, may have been a little too excited.
Griffin had a stellar first season on the court. He became an All-Star and won the Rookie of the Year award. Off the court, however, his time in L.A. was rocky, and nothing could have prepared the young dunker for dealing with the team’s eccentric owner.
Sterling, the only owner in NBA history to be banned for life, took particular interest in his new star. Unfortunately for Griffin, to say things got awkward between them would be an understatement.
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Trophy player
As a guest on “The Adam Friedland Show,” Griffin revealed some hilarious anecdotes from his time with Sterling as the owner.
“He would come in with his crew, it’d be like 10-12 people with him in the locker room. And we’d all have towels on,” Griffin recalled. “One time, I’m in a towel, he comes over, grabs my arm, and he’s got all his people in there and he goes, ‘Let’s hear it for our number one star, hip hip!’ And he raised my arm, and all these people go ‘hooray!'”
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When comedian and podcaster Friedland asked him how he responded to that in the locker room, Griffin said, “You just kind of laugh it off, like, ‘That was nuts.'”
Like the stereotype of wealthy men showing off their trophy wives, Sterling liked showing off his star player at every opportunity. At his annual White Party in Malibu, the Clippers owner paraded Griffin around to his guests in what some would consider a dehumanizing way.
“He was like ‘feel his stomach, feel his abs, feel his arms.’ I was like 19 years old,” Griffin confessed with a mixture of humor and disbelief.
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Griffin revealed that a sympathetic party-goer who could see how embarrassing the ordeal was gave him some advice.
“At one point, a guy who had clearly been to a bunch of these parties turned to me and said, “Just keep smiling, man. It’ll all be over soon.”
Friedland then pointed out the odd power dynamics of a boss treating his employee that way, but Griffin made light of it, saying with a grin, “Yeah, my boss was touching me.”
Griffin addressed this dynamic in an article Griffin wrote for the Player’s Tribune. “At this point, a lot of you are probably wondering why I didn’t pull my hand away, or why I didn’t just leave the party. For one, I was a 20-year-old kid from Oklahoma. But even if I had been 25, I don’t know if it would’ve been any different. The guy was my boss.”
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Sterling’s downfall
To be fair, Griffin couldn’t have been caught completely off guard by Sterling’s behavior. In that same article, Griffin wrote that he looked up Donald Sterling online once he found out the Clippers would draft him and immediately concluded that he was a racist.
Sterling’s racism eventually caught up to him and dominated the headlines in 2014. A shocking recording of Sterling making racist remarks to his then-girlfriend was released, sparking widespread outrage among players, fans and even the broader public.
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NBA commissioner Adam Silver handed Sterling the most severe punishment ever issued to an NBA owner. A lifetime ban, a $2.5 million fine (the maximum allowed) and he was forced to sell the Clippers, thus ending the strange saga of Sterling and NBA ownership.
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer purchased the Clippers for a staggering $2 billion. Under Ballmer’s leadership, the Clippers squad felt supported and valued, marking a welcome change from the uncomfortable, chaotic environment of the Sterling era.
Griffin played for the Clippers for eight seasons and played a huge part in the franchise’s rise from the joke of the league to a consistent championship contender. The six-time All-Star retired in 2023 and looks back on the Ballmer years more fondly than the cringeworthy Sterling years.
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This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Jul 21, 2025, where it first appeared.