Blake Griffin: A modern NBA story of adapting your game to survive
Watch Detroit Pistons @ Cleveland Cavaliers live on Sky Sports Arena at 10pm on Saturday night.
Wednesday 23 October 2019 12:23, UK
It is easy to forget sometimes that Blake Griffin is not even thirty yet.
Live NBA: Detroit @ Cleveland
It feels like he has been through the entire lifecycle of an NBA player already and yet he does not reach the milestone until the middle of this month.
Griffin has experienced plenty of the highs - both metaphorical (top draft pick in 2009) and literal ('Lob City' anyone?) - in the league and many of the lows - a devastating and career-altering injury and a franchise you love turning its back on you, to name but two.
Such rollercoaster emotions are all part and parcel of the life of a basketball player and of course players like Griffin are well-compensated for their work.
But the current chapter in Detroit, as the Pistons prepare to face the Cleveland Cavaliers on Saturday night, is something altogether different once again.
The story of his career and how Griffin's game has evolved and changed over the course of his career is similar to that of the footballer Ryan Giggs.
At Manchester United, Giggs started off as a flying winger who attacked the goal and byline at every opportunity, but by the end of his career, he tended to sit in the midfield using his intelligence and reading of the game to dictate the play.
And for Griffin, it's been a similar story of gradually adapting and changing how he does things to continue to succeed. Yet it looked at one point like Griffin's NBA dream was over before it had begun.
After two years at college in Oklahoma, where he was named the Consensus National Player of the Year (in college) and Big 12 Player of the Year in his sophomore campaign with the Sooners, Griffin was selected by the Los Angeles Clippers with the top pick in the draft.
He was poised for an impactful debut season after also winning MVP in the NBA Summer League but in the final pre-season game disaster struck. Griffin broke his left kneecap landing after a dunk. It meant he was forced to have surgery and sit out the year, as the Clippers finished with just 29 wins.
Undeterred despite the gravity of the injury, Griffin entered the NBA as a rookie in 2010 and, evidently keen to make up for lost time, the 6ft 10ins power forward had an outstanding debut campaign, dominating matchups with his immense ability driving to the basket and dunking over the top of opponents.
By the end of his first year in the league, Griffin had been named an All-Star and had won the Rookie of the Year award and NBA Slam Dunk Contest. It was one of the all-time great rookie campaigns in league history, averaging 22.5 points and 12.1 rebounds as well as recording two triple-doubles, demonstrating a versatility and playmaking aptitude which would become very useful as his career progressed.
In the following season, which was shortened by a lockout, Griffin was again named to the All-Star team and the All-NBA Second Team, the first of three times he was given that honour.
The arrival of Chris Paul in a trade executed by the Clippers in December 2011 helped improve the team's fortunes.
Paul was often the provider of lobbed passes for alley-oop slams during his previous stint in New Orleans and his switch to the west coast sparked the beginning of the 'Lob City' era in Los Angeles - a term coined by Griffin upon hearing the news of Paul's arrival.
The words proved prophetic as the Clippers enjoyed the most successful era in franchise history, bagging six playoff appearances on the spin and claiming their first two Pacific Division titles. Griffin himself was rewarded with a five-year $95million contract before the 2012-13 season.
The arrival of Doc Rivers as head coach in 2013 entrenched the team's 'Lob City' identity, as they also recruited talented shooting guard JJ Redick to complement Paul, Griffin and center DeAndre Jordan.
In Doc Rivers' first season, Griffin was outstanding - finishing third in MVP voting and averaging a career-high of 24.1 points per game. And he did all of that amid a change of ownership caused due to racist remarks made by then-team owner Donald Sterling, which saw former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer take over.
But although Griffin was performing superbly and the Clippers' regular-season success was undeniable, the team never really delivered in the postseason, never getting further than the Conference Semi-Finals, losing to the Oklahoma City Thunder and Houston Rockets in successive seasons.
Griffin himself though was evolving as a player and his playmaking abilities were improving as he averaged 5.3 assists in the 2014-15 campaign, quite an achievement for a big.
Talk of 'point Blake' begun to rear its head, although Chris Paul was still the primary ball handler and had the reins of the team's offense.
Griffin, for his part, was magnificent in the 2015 Playoffs but Rivers used every last ounce of the big man's energy and he was spent by the time the Rockets series reached its climax, with the Clippers coughing up a 3-1 series lead and a 19-point lead in the third quarter of game six as they looked to have all but booked a place in the Conference Finals.
The following couple of seasons for Griffin were disrupted by yet more injuries which continued to chip away at his athleticism and dunking abilities but he continued to provide good production for the Clippers when he played despite the setbacks.
The franchise could never quite get over the hump in the postseason though, with Griffin picking up injuries in consecutive seasons as the Clippers crashed out in the first round both times.
After that, despite it being the most successful era in franchise history, the ownership decided it was time to 'retool', not quite a full-scale rebuild, but it was felt by those in power there was a definite need to freshen up.
To that end, Chris Paul was traded to the Houston Rockets in the summer of 2017 and Griffin was presented as the new face of the franchise after signing a new five-year $173million contract.
And there was plenty of pomp and circumstance about it. As the Clippers held their free agent meeting with Griffin at Staples, they lowered the lights in the Staples Center and raised his jersey to the rafters as a choir sang and the PA announcer said: "Tonight, we're honouring a lifelong Clipper."
But his life as a Clipper wasn't to last much longer.
Griffin's career, and indeed his life, changed completely in instant at the end of January last year when, after nearly a decade as a Clipper, he was traded to the Detroit Pistons for Tobias Harris, Avery Bradley, Boban Marjanovic and some valuable draft picks by a front office keen to continue with their gradual resetting of the roster.
Given his gravitas as a multiple All-Star, it was a seismic move that resonated throughout the league.
It saw Griffin trade a perennial playoff team for one struggling to make its way into the postseason, although the move did also see the Oklahoma-native paired with Andre Drummond, the league's leading rebounder and another elite inside scorer.
As much as it was a fresh start for the Clippers, it has also proved to be exactly that for the player himself. Pistons' main point guard, Reggie Jackson, is more of a scorer than a playmaker, and coupled with the respective skill sets of Drummond and the rest of the players on Detroit's fledgling roster, it has created the perfect environment for 'point Blake' to come into his own.
In 25 games after moving to Detroit, Griffin averaged more than six assists last season, a crazy-high number for a forward.
His scoring initially went down, but this season it has rocketed to a career-high of 25.7 points per game, and he's also averaging 5.4 assists (a number that could well be higher if he was surrounded by more and better shooters). He has become a well-rounded offensive initiator.
Despite possessing a losing record (29-31), the Pistons could well bag a playoff place in the weaker Eastern Conference and currently sit seventh in the standings, while Griffin returned to the All-Star Game this year for the first time since 2015 - as a different player from the springy, robust and athletic dunker who last made an appearance.
Griffin now uses his bulk in a more intelligent way. He operates in the post, looking for openings to play the pass and potential mismatches for his teammates, while his scoring in the paint is more effective than ever, even if not quite as spectacular as the Lob City days.
In an interview with GQ during that first season which he was forced to sit out, Griffin said: "Basketball is basketball, but with each level, there's new challenges and new things you have to pick up."
It seems that the 29-year-old has very much practised what he preached through the ups and downs of his career.
The next chapter should prove to be a fascinating one as, having gone from ridiculously athletic dunk machine and explosive finisher to the fulcrum of Detroit's entire offense, he continues to evolve his game.
And the enigma that is Blake Griffin might still have some development to go yet.
