Clippers' Blake Griffin amazes even his teammates

Even the setup man in the Great Dunk Moment was moved to curiosity when he got home after Saturday's Clippers-Knicks game.

Randy Foye wanted to check out the Blake Griffin show, in particular, the dunk on Timofey Mozgov, the one on which Griffin practically used the rookie center like a stepladder.

(Only Griffin ignored the first few steps and went right to the top.)

"I went on YouTube last night to see if they had it up there, and they already had it up," Foye said Sunday after practice. "I checked it out because one of them I gave him the pass."

Foye, a student of history, also remembered that he set up Griffin's first points in the NBA. You know, that dunk against the Portland Trail Blazers, the one looking tame in comparison with the defacing of Mozgov in the third quarter and later Danilo Gallinari.

"Yesterday we laughed on the court. I said: 'We struck again,'" Foye said.

The lightness of being Blake Griffin has been the highlight of a rapidly sinking Clippers season. They have won just once in 14 games and, well, coming to town next is one-loss New Orleans.

First, a review of Griffin's achievements should be in order. He had 44 points, 15 rebounds and seven assists against the Knicks, putting him in classic company. Only three other rookies have put together games in the 40-point, 15-rebound category since the NBA-ABA merger, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

"It means nothing if you don't have a win by that game," Griffin said Sunday, repeating some of his postgame thoughts. "So hopefully that will help my confidence; that will help everything. I think I learned a lot last night, not only from the amount of film I watched on Amare [Stoudemire], but also from seeing him do some of his moves and stuff. Because I think we're kind of similar in the way we play a little bit."

One of the classiest moments came when the Knicks' Stoudemire, a five-time All-Star, acknowledged Griffin's air show with a slight nod. The combatant was taking a second in the mano a mano dunk-a-thon.

Griffin had once attended Stoudemire's skills camp in Arizona between his freshman and sophomore years at Oklahoma.

"At the camp, one of his guys gave me his number and said if I ever wanted to come work out with him, I could," Griffin said. "But I never really got around to doing that, just because I had to go back to school and all that. He just told me to keep working, and last night the same thing.

"We were kind of going at it for a while, but like I said, it doesn't mean anything if you don't get that win."