Blake Griffin discusses why he signed with Nets: 'You know the ultimate goal'

Six-time All-Star Blake Griffin spoke to media on Wednesday for the first time as a member of the Nets.

Following his first practice with Brooklyn, Griffin spoke about what made the Nets such a desirable landing spot, and also made his injury status very clear, reiterating what Steve Nash said about getting back to playing after missing about a month.

"There's a lot of reasons," Griffin said about joining the Nets. "First of all, in my conversations with them leading up to this, obviously they expressed interest. Interest was mutual. Feel like they had a need for another big, another guy to facilitate and sort of fill these gaps. Anytime you have these type of players, you have to guys around them to relive that pressure. For me, it's about playing meaningful basketball, playing in the playoffs, and contending for a championship.

"I'm not injured, at all. I haven't played in three weeks. I think it's smart to sort of ramp me up, or actually almost four weeks now. There's no injury... Honestly I'll have to sit with the performance staff here. I haven't met with them, but they're putting a plan together. My trust is in them. And we'll talk about it on Thursday or Friday, and put a plan together and really figure out an exact date."

During his time with the Clippers, Griffin was teammates with All-Star guard Chris Paul, three-point specialist J.J. Redick, Jamal Crawford, and DeAndre Jordan. That group of players helped the Clippers win two Pacific Division titles (2012-13, 2013-14) and six-straight playoff appearances.

However, they never made it past the conference semi-finals, as Griffin now hopes to contend for a title this season in Brooklyn.

"There's always that competitive side in basketball," Griffin said. "Every year, previous years in Detroit, our goal was to get to the playoffs. And we did that two years ago. And that's great, but my main focus now is to contend for a championship. My mindset doesn't change, I'm always trying to win a basketball game when I step on the court. But playing these meaningful minutes, playing with these guys. Really contributing in any way possible.

"Not saying [I had] to shoulder the whole load with certain teams, but I had a little bit more of that in Detroit with a younger team, more of a mentor role. Now this sort of reminds me of playing with some of those Clippers teams where we had so many veteran guys, so many experienced guys. There's a feeling, I guess, even in practice tonight. You know the ultimate goal, you know the big goal, the main focus. It's exciting to have that."