From ESPN: Blake Griffin doesn't want banner up if the Clippers win the NBA Pacific Division
L.A. Clippers’ forward Blake Griffin would be happy if his team won the Pacific Division but doesn’t like the idea of hanging a banner for that accomplishment.
As reported by ESPN:
“I kind of have bigger goals than that for the team,” Griffin said. “I think the team has bigger goals than that. We expected to win the division. We didn’t come into this season thinking, ‘Oh, it would be great if we could win the division.’ We expected it. It’s something to be proud of and maybe there’s a banner that goes up (in the training facility), but it’s not something that needs to go up in Staples [Center], and we don’t need to hang our hat on that.”
Of course Blake and his teammates have aspirations to win it all (I think it’s pretty safe to say that all the NBA teams want to win a championship year in and year out) but I don’t see what the problem is to hang a banner. Just because you hang a division banner doesn’t mean that your team is jinxed for the rest of the year. It’s up to the coaches and players to win those other banners and if an owner want to hang banners to celebrate the accomplishments of a team so be it.
The only way that I see hanging division banners becoming a problem is if the Boston Celtics or Los Angeles Lakers start hanging them. If those two teams hung all of their division and conference banners alongside their championship banners then it would like Paul Bunyan’s giant laundry line.