With the 2016 NBA Trade Deadline approaching and the Los Angeles Clippers on a roll, here’s a look at 10 teams that should trade for Blake Griffin if he becomes available.
The Los Angeles Clippers are in a very odd, uncomfortable place. At 31-16, they sit at fourth in the Western Conference standings behind three powerhouse title contenders. The Clippers sport a top-five offense and a top-10 defense, they’ve got one of the NBA’s top-10 players in Blake Griffin and they’ve managed to go 14-3 in 17 games without him so far this season.
Therein lies the problem: Once again the Clippers are a great, but not elite team, and once again, they’ve managed to string together a few surprising win streaks with Griffin sidelined. At this rate, we pretty much know how the story goes: Griffin returns, the Clippers fool the world into thinking they’re a legitimate title contender, and then they find some way to spectacularly fail in the playoffs.
It’s no surprise, then, that Griffin’s torn quadriceps and subsequent hand injury — the product of an insanely dumb decision to punch one of the team’s equipment managers — has some throwing Griffin’s name around in trade rumors. As ESPN’s Zach Lowe illuminated Friday morning, however, there is some logic to that otherwise crazy sentiment.
Griffin might miss the next two months with this hand injury, leaving him only a few weeks to prepare for the playoffs. The Clippers’ new spread offense has worked without him since he doesn’t have three-point range, and head coach Doc Rivers has said in the past that another playoff flameout might prompt him to blow up the team, which seems inevitable at this point with the way the Warriors and Spurs are playing.
Griffin would yield the highest return in a potential trade among the Clippers’ Big Three, and for all the noise about the limitations of his range and his interior defense, he was playing at an MVP level before the injury, averaging 23.2 points, 8.7 rebounds and 5.0 assists per game on 50.8 percent shooting.
In last year's playoffs, Griffin averaged 26-13-6 on 51%. Why would a team considering trading him? That's my question.
— Justin Russo (@FlyByKnite) January 29, 2016
A Blake Griffin trade is entirely unlikely to happen before this year’s trade deadline, but if the Clippers were to try and move him now and go all in on surrounding Chris Paul and DeAndre Jordan pick-and-rolls with shooters on the perimeter, how would they do so?
Again, Griffin should be the last member of the team’s Big Three to be traded. He’s a terrific scorer, high-flying dunker and unbelievable passer for his position, and even with the Clippers being so successful in his absence, 17 games is a ridiculously small sample size. He’s also still locked in until the 2017-18 season, when he has a $21.4 million player option.
But if Rivers chooses to cash in on Griffin’s value now and avoid a full-scale rebuild (the very reason he left Boston), there are several ways he could do so in trades that involve excellent players who could help the Clippers win now — along with future draft picks to help sweeten the deal.
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As you’ll soon realize, every one of these deals has a caveat of some sort, and that’s ignoring the most obvious obstacle that the Clippers shouldn’t — and probably won’t — trade Griffin at all.
But with nothing but time to kill before the 2016 NBA Trade Deadline and the prospect of trading Griffin making more sense than people realize, here are 10 potential Blake Griffin trades (which all work in ESPN’s NBA Trade Machine).
Next: No. 10