Serge Ibaka hits Blake Griffin in his naughty bits [Video]

Clippers vs. Thunder is turning into a nice in-season rivalry. Things get chippy and Sunday’s game was no exception. During the fourth quarter, Serge Ibaka hit Blake Griffin with a hard, intentional punch in the jewels. Griffin has a reputation for flopping but that clearly wasn’t the case here. Following the game, Kendrick Perkins had this to say:

“He 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.”

Serge Ibaka had this to add:

“He hit my hands away,” Ibaka told reporters. “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,” Ibaka said. “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.”