Blake Griffin is one of the best power forwards in the NBA today, but is he having a down year?
When he was drafted by the Los Angeles Clippers as the first pick of the 2009 draft, out of the University of Oklahoma, everybody knew that he was a surefire, cannot miss prospect. The best power forward to come out of college since Tim Duncan.
The Blake-show hit a speed bump his first year in the league, as he suffered a serious knee injury and missed the entire 2009-10 season. Los Angeles was still in the dark days at that time, with the evil overlord Donald Sterling at the helm and the Clippers’ curse in full bloom. Many people shook their heads, thinking, “Why, why did such an exciting player go to such a terrible franchise?”
Those days are long gone as Griffin hit the court in 2010 and immediately put up solid numbers and had dozens of spectacular dunks. However, as Griffin continues in his fifth year on the court, and sixth overall since being drafted, how do we evaluate his future?
Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 12/23/2014.
That is a chart of Griffin’s per-36 minute numbers in the NBA. You can clearly see that , for some reason, his field goal percentage has drastically declined this year, per basketball-reference.com. His rebounding is down, steals are down, and blocks. His points per game are up, meaning he has become a higher volume, lower efficiency player. How did this happen?
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Griffin is currently seeing a career high in usage rate, at almost 31%. To put that in perspective, that ranks 6th in the NBA, behind guys like Kobe Bryant (36.4), Carmelo Anthony (31), and James Harden (32), and ahead of players like LeBron James (30.5) and Stephen Curry (28.9).
Blake Griffin is shooting often, and missing more than he has in years past. This has caused his value to plummet, using advanced metrics. His win-shares have fallen from a career-high 12.2 last year to a career-low 3.3 this season. That 12.2 in 2013-14 put Griffin in at No. 6 in the association. This year’s 3.3 has Griffin slotted in at 16th.
So what has gone wrong? Why is Griffin turning from a perennial MVP candidate to a borderline all-star? Check out this story from back in early October, via Fox Sports West, about Griffin’s improved jump shot.
Griffin made a conscious effort to improve his jump shot, and maybe to shoot more from outside and less of those fantastic soaring dunks we have come to love.
Perhaps Griffin is tired of getting beaten up inside, with players continuously fouling hard on Griffin’s inside moves, in an effort to prevent an appearance on an endless highlight loop around the web.
Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 12/23/2014.
That is a chart of the distance of Blake Griffin’s shots in his NBA career. His average shot distance has gone up every year he has been in the league, reaching a career high of 10.5 feet this year. He is also taking fewer shots within three feet of the rim and far more shots from 16 feet or farther.
Griffin continues to shoot more and more of those long-two jump shots, the kind that kill your efficiency. Whether Griffin really is doing it to avoid the hard fouls from opponents, or if it is just a product of DeAndre Jordan taking more of those easy shots, leaving Griffin to find his offense elsewhere, is unknown.
What is known, though, is that Griffin is only hitting 37 percent of those 16-footers, and the number of attempted dunks is at an all-time low. So far this year, Griffin has made only 34 dunks.
That puts him on pace for about 100 dunks for the year, a number that pales in comparison to the 176 dunks he had last year, and the 214 dunks he made in his inaugural season.
So whatever the reason, Griffin has to stop taking so many long twos, and needs to get himself back into the paint, posterizing the competition. It may be painful sometimes, but he is being paid a lot of money to dunk the basketball, and that is exactly what is missing from his game this year.
Those ferocious dunks are what makes Griffin so feared by opponents and beloved by fans.
If hard fouls are really so bad that they are causing Griffin to avoid the paint, then we should probably start looking to Adam Silver and the league office to finally fix a problem that has plagued the NBA for years.
If it is simply Griffin trying out something he worked on over the summer, then maybe Doc Rivers can get in his ear and set things right. Either way, the west just keeps getting tougher and the Clippers need to be at their best, and most efficient, if they want to escape the death race that is the Western Conference playoffs.
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