Chris Paul out eight weeks after thumb surgery, likely misses start of camp

Chris Paul injured his thumb early on in USA Basketball training camp for the Olympics, while the team was still in Las Vegas. It held him up for a few days, but he came back and played well — Paul was huge in the second half of the USA’s gold medal winning game over Spain.

But the thumb injury was more serious than Paul let on.

Paul had surgery Tuesday to repair a torn ligament in his thumb, the Clippers announced. The surgery was done by Dr. Steven Shin, a hand specialist from the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic.

Paul will be out eight weeks — that has him returning about the middle of NBA training camp if everything heals in a timely fashion. He could be back before the season starts but should miss a chunk of training camp.

Blake Griffin, the Clippers other star, left Team USA training camp with a knee injury that required surgery. He is expected to be back and ready to go for training camp.

These are real concerns for the Clippers, who want to take a step forward after a 40-win season and making it to the second round of the playoffs. They want to challenge the Lakers, and even though that may be unlikely this year they, San Antonio and Denver could battle it out for the three seed. This is a franchise looking to grow, looking for a way to break away from its history. And having key players coming in from off-season surgery is not the best way to do that.

The Clippers need things to go well this year or Chris Paul could leave as a free agent at the end of the season. He will have played out his contract.

Paul’s injury was discussed at the time, it frustrated coach Mike Krzyzewski because it held up the team’s development — he had an injured Paul and a distracted Deron Williams (his free agency was just getting taken care of). But they both came around, team USA never lost a game. But it was never discussed as this serious, and it didn’t really show much in Paul’s play.