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The Los Angeles Clippers announced Saturday morning that Blake Griffin will miss the remainder of the 2017 NBA playoffs after suffering an "injury to the plantar plate of his right big toe."

Griffin was injured Friday night in the Clippers' 111-106 victory over the Jazz, and was visibly angry upon having to return to the locker room for treatment. It is the second straight year that Griffin has been injured in the first round and forced to miss the rest of the postseason.

Five things to know:

  1. This doesn't necessarily doom the Clippers vs. the Jazz in the first round. L.A. lost on a buzzer-beater in Game 1, but has responded with back-to-back wins to take a 2-1 series lead. Rudy Gobert isn't due back until later in this series, and if the Clippers can get Game 4 in Utah, it's likely enough for them to hold on and secure the first-round win. (Yes, I know, that means a 3-1 lead, which they of course are very familiar with losing, but the statistically improbable can't keep happening or else we would have to call it the statistically probable. Although, nothing would be more Clippers than losing Game 1 at full health, building a 3-1 lead with Griffin out, then losing it again.) 
  2. Their slim chances of beating the Warriors are done. The Clippers have been smashed to smithereens all but one time they've played the Warriors since Steve Kerr arrived, and each of the past six meetings. The Clippers' big advantage in the series was athletic size, able to counter Draymond Green with Griffin while hammering the Warriors inside with DeAndre Jordan. Without Griffin, they lose their best overall scorer. The Clippers are particularly short on power forwards to counter with in his absence, because their roster was built with the idea of Blake Griffin playing 35-plus minutes in the playoffs. They just don't have enough firepower to beat the Warriors with Griffin out, when they were facing long odds coming into that kind of matchup anyway.
  3. They don't have a great set of reserve options. Marreese Speights will likely get the starting nod, and he's a fine scorer who can stretch the floor ... but a disaster defensively who can be targeted. Brandon Bass is hanging around on the roster, but hasn't played a single minute in the playoffs. Paul Pierce will likely get some time at power forward ... but he's closer to the announcer booth than being a playoff weapon. The Clippers survived Griffin's injury in the regular season, but the playoffs make the situation more difficult.
  4. Chris Paul is going to have to have a 2011-era-Chris-Paul performance. Paul took over in the fourth Friday to deliver the Clippers their Game 3 win. He's going to have to do that over and over again going forward. Paul typically takes a patient, see-what-the-game-gives-you approach, looking for his shot in spots but never forcing it until he feels it's necessary. Well, it's necessary. Paul is going to have to put up Westbrook-ian lines of 30-plus points and double-digit assists if the Clippers are going to have a chance, even against the Jazz. Utah has been able to limit J.J. Redick with Joe Ingles and George Hill, and Jordan is still not a guy who can create his own offense on account of his free throw woes. Paul is going to have to do everything for L.A., which at least is a familiar spot for him after his time in New Orleans.

And finally...

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Blake Griffin is out for the rest of the playoffs.  USATSI

This complicates the Clippers' future. There has been a lot of talk about how the Clippers might blow up this frustrating, snake-bitten core this summer, with talk of Paul and Griffin leaving in free agency and Doc Rivers heading to Orlando to be the general manger. Rivers, head of basketball operations for the Clippers as well as coach, has denied both ideas, saying they want to keep this core together. But between Griffin's problematic injury history, how much the players on this team seem to hate being around one another, and their general staleness, moving on just seems like a better approach. 

But there are complicating factors. For one, Rivers knows how hard it is to build a team with multiple All-Stars. You want to try and keep those guys together and hope it comes together, like it did for the Mavericks in 2011. Second, with Griffin's injury, you can't objectively tell yourself that this core failed. You don't know. That's the most frustrating thing about these kinds of injuries, it robs you of finding out whether your team "has it." The last time this team failed at full strength was 2015, when they lost a 3-1 lead to Houston in a pretty flukish series. You can talk yourself into believing in the Clippers pretty easily. 

Their three free agents this summer, Griffin, Paul and Redick, are likely to have their decisions impacted by the L.A. market. If Paul wants to win a title, he needs to leave, which means leaving money on the table that he specifically bargained for in the latest CBA by raising the age for the max contract. With Griffin, the Clippers are facing having to give max money to a free agent who has been unable to stay healthy for large swaths of his career, and whose biggest defining skill, his athleticism, is diminishing as a result. 

These are not easy decisions. A call to blow up the Clippers could trigger a return to the amateurish awfulness that defined the franchise for 40 years. New owner Steve Ballmer mitigates most of that with his approach, but any time you talk about throwing away an era where you have three All-Stars, you run that risk. 

There's nothing good that comes out of Griffin's injury, not for Griffin and not for the Clippers' short or long-term prospects. It only makes what was already a frustrating situation that much worse. 

Which is just so Clippers.