Clippers’ Blake Griffin making progress toward return from injury

Reporting from SACRAMENTO — After Blake Griffin had another routine follow-up examination Thursday on the right knee he had surgery on last month, Clippers Coach Doc Rivers said his star forward has been making progress.

Rivers said Griffin has looked great when they saw him at the team’s practice facility in Playa Vista.

“You can just tell he’s in better spirits, which tells me that his body is feeling better,” Rivers said. “That’s good.”

Griffin had a “routine arthroscopic procedure” to remove loose bodies from his knee on Dec. 20. The Clippers said he would be out three to six weeks while recovering.

Griffin, the team’s leading scorer at 21 points per game, could miss up to 20 games if he is out the maximum six weeks. That would have him coming back at the end of this month or early February.

“Whenever he comes back, there probably could have been a week or two earlier,” Rivers said. “But we’re just at the mindset that we’re going to be healthy. If it takes longer, it takes longer.”

Rivers said he’d prefer that Griffin not have any minutes restrictions when he comes back to play.

“At the end of the day, he’s just going to be really healthy before he gets on the floor,” Rivers said. “It’s a long year and we got to look at it that way.”

Rivers vows fewer technicals

Even though Rivers said he has had some of his technical fouls rescinded by the NBA over the course of his time as coach of the Clippers, he said that’s still not acceptable.

Rivers has been adamant that his team has to stop getting technical fouls, starting with him.

He had six technical fouls entering Friday night’s game. He had been ejected from three games this season.

“I can’t tell you the ones, but I’ve not had as my techs as you think, let me put it that way,” Rivers said. “Having said that, it still didn’t matter. I got one, and whether I should have gotten it or not, you can’t retroactively put me back in the game. You can’t retroactively get the techs back and get the free throws back.”

So when the NBA tells Rivers several of the technical fouls called on him should not have been called, he said it tells him more about the state of his team and “not less.”

“We do have a shorter leash at times, and we’ve earned it,” he said. “Like I don’t buy into the philosophy of, ‘They’re [the officials] picking on me.’ I buy into the philosophy the reason they’re picking on you is because you’re doing something.”

[email protected]

Follow Broderick Turner on Twitter @BA_Turner