Ballmer: Clippers moved Griffin to adapt to 'modern NBA'

The NBA's evolution was supposedly a catalyst in the Los Angeles Clippers trading away their franchise player last month.

Los Angeles shocked its fans in January when it traded power forward Blake Griffin to the Detroit Pistons for Tobias Harris, Avery Bradley, Boban Marjanovic, and a pair of draft picks (Willie Reed and Brice Johnson were also sent to Detroit).

Less than three weeks removed from the megadeal, Clippers owner Steve Ballmer says the desire to take a more balanced approach in line with today's NBA prompted his team to deal the 28-year-old forward.

"(Griffin) is obviously a superstar player," Ballmer said Saturday at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston, according to ESPN's Kevin Arnovitz. "But if you look at what happened injury-wise, if you look at the kind of chemistry we were getting on our team, the thing you can see at the high level with the numbers when I started - one guy got all the assists, one guy got all the points, and one guy got all the rebounds.

"It's not all quite that way, but I think in the modern NBA, we were seeing it more and more - there's a greater distribution of responsibility."

Despite trading away a five-time All-Star and one of their best players, the Clippers never considered "tanking" the rest of the season, according to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski. Instead, they hoped to remain competitive in the West while getting younger.

Ballmer all but confirmed that notion Saturday, adding that Los Angeles isn't done transforming its roster.

"We have to add some pieces obviously, but I think we're building for what I think is the modern NBA, and that trend has only accelerated since we signed Blake last summer."