Blake Griffin broke his hand back at the end of January while punching a Los Angeles Clippers equipment manager in the face. Griffin had surgery on said hand about a week ago to repair the spiral fracture on his fourth metacarpal. Griffin surfaced for the first time since the surgery, and there are pictures of what the hand looks like from TMZ Sports.
The pictures show Griffin's hand being extremely swollen with a very noticeable scar that goes across almost his entire hand. Griffin was not wearing any sort of cast or protection at all for the hand and was, in fact, holding car keys and a wallet in his surgically repaired right hand, so he clearly does have some use of the hand.
Griffin was initially given a timetable of four to six weeks to return after undergoing the surgery, but since then, that timetable has been called "unrealistic" by Clippers head coach Doc Rivers. Some people expect Griffin to miss at least two months of action, and it is completely reasonable to think that he might miss the rest of the regular season. Based on some of the reports, the best case scenario for Griffin would be to return around the end of March/beginning of April. If Griffin returns when most people expect him to, he would only have a week or two to get back in the swing of things before the playoffs begin.
This incident has opened up a whole discussion about Griffin, and his future with the Clippers since it put them in a very difficult spot, but that isn't expected to be addressed before the Feb. 18 trade deadline, according to Dan Woike of The Orange County Register. There is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding Griffin and the Clippers, including when he may be able to return and what kind of suspension he may face from the NBA, but at least we got to see what his hand looks like shortly after the surgery.
