LOS ANGELES - Blake Griffin prefers not to think of his broken left kneecap as a season-ending injury.
"I guess you could say it's a debut-prolonging injury," he said with a wry grin Thursday.
The No. 1 pick in last year's NBA draft is coming to terms with the fact he won't get his first real action with the Los Angeles Clippers until next season. The club announced Wednesday he'll undergo surgery to heal his knee, which hasn't recovered from a preseason stress fracture.
Yet the good-natured power forward still seemed optimistic at the Clippers' Playa Vista training complex. He's already making plans to return decisively from an injury that will keep him out of basketball for at least four months.
"I'm going to attack it and make it into something positive," said Griffin, last season's consensus college player of the year at Oklahoma. "Hopefully I can speed up the recovery process as much as possible. It's better to take care of it now and not have to deal with it in the future."
Griffin knows patience will be part of his recovery process - no easy achievement for a player who said he hadn't been away from basketball for more than 13 days in his life until he felt a sharp pain in his kneecap after dunking in the Clippers' final preseason game. He attempted to return with rest and rehabilitation instead of surgery, even running on a treadmill without much pain as recently as last week.
But some recent bounding exercises caused significant discomfort in his knee, and Griffin finally realized surgery was the only way to get right again. Nothing is structurally wrong with Griffin's knee, and he's been told he can return at full strength.
"I wouldn't be able to have full strength," Griffin said. "I'd be playing at 75 percent for the rest of the season. I'd much rather get this done now, and be able to play 100 percent next season."
Griffin's aggressive play and relentless work ethic turned him into a star with the Sooners and made him the top pick. He has followed a regimented schedule of weightlifting, proper diet and basketball work for years, but Griffin's first months in the NBA have taught him he's not invincible.
"Making sure you don't push your body too hard, that's tough to do," he said.
Griffin will be on crutches for at least a week after surgery, which is expected to be next Wednesday. He hopes to be back at full strength by summer so he can begin preparations for his second crack at his rookie season - perhaps without the usual rookie hazing.
"Hopefully next year I won't have to get doughnuts or wear a backpack," Griffin said with a grin. "I'm going to sit down with the veterans for a meeting."
Griffin realizes many in basketball aren't even slightly shocked that the long-struggling Clippers had such a bad injury break. Danny Manning and Michael Olowokandi, the previous No. 1 overall draft picks by the Clippers, also missed parts of their rookie seasons for a club that has just two winning seasons in 30 years and only one playoff series victory since moving to Los Angeles in 1984.
"Every team has injuries," Griffin said. "Obviously when a guy on the Clippers (gets hurts), everybody is going to say, 'Oh, man.' But injuries happen. They're just part of sports."
