The Los Angeles Clippers have seen terrible injury luck in recent seasons. Stars Chris Paul and Blake Griffin were forced out of last spring’s playoffs with serious injuries, and Griffin has already missed nearly a month after knee surgery and should remain in street clothes for at least another week. The team and its fans must be hoping that their fortune turns for the better soon.

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It looked as if things were only going to get worse during a few moments of Monday night’s home game against the Oklahoma City Thunder. With about three minutes remaining in the first half, Russell Westbrook went up for a shot in the hopes of drawing a foul from Paul. Westbrook succeeded in initiating contact but did not get the call. Unfortunately, the Clippers’ leader ended up with something much worse than his first personal — he appeared to jam his left hand on Westbrook and was immediately subbed out. Take a look here:

As you can see, the hyper-competitive Paul was not happy at all:

Paul was ruled out for the rest of the game with a sprained left thumb soon after, but the he and the Clippers appear to have avoided any broken bones:

The severity of Paul’s injury will not be known until he undergoes an MRI, which could end up showing ligament damage that would keep him out for a long period of time. That scenario would be very problematic for the Clippers, who cannot reasonably approximate Paul’s impact at both ends even if Griffin returns fairly soon. CP3 missed seven games in late December and early January (all after Griffin’s surgery) with a strained hamstring and saw his teammates go 2-5 with two 20-point losses. It’s hard to imagine that the Clippers would fall out of the playoffs without Paul, but they’d almost certainly see their seed drop from their current No. 4 position.

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Everyone can be forgiven for fearing more bad news is to come. Paul isn’t exactly known for his stonefaced demeanor, but his reaction to this injury had a fair amount in common with what he did after breaking his right hand against the Portland Trail Blazers in April. Plus, it’s not as if the Clippers have had a lot of positive injury updates lately.

The silver lining on Monday was that the Clippers did just fine after Paul went to the locker room. In fact, they added to the lead on their way to a 120-98 blowout of the Thunder. Reserve Marreese Speights led six players in double figures with 23 points and 10 rebounds off the bench.

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Eric Freeman is a writer for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at efreeman_ysports@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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