Detroit Pistons: This is the best Blake Griffin we’ve ever seen

The Detroit Pistons traded for Blake Griffin last year, and he’s been paying dividends for them all year long. This is the best he’s ever been.

The Detroit Pistons traded for Blake Griffin last year and, upon first glance, gave up way too much for a guy who had really never been the No. 1 option outside of one season when Chris Paul was injured. With just under 100 games completed in his Pistons tenure, he’s been playing better than he’s ever been, and it isn’t particularly close. This is, without a doubt, the best Griffin has ever been in his career.

His shooting splits of .463/.358/.749 aren’t the best marks of his career, but they are very good considering how much his volume of work has increased this season compared to seasons in the past. This season, he’s taking a career-high 6.9 3s per game — a major increase from last year’s career-high 5.6 per game.

He’s been taking more shots and shooting more 3-pointers than he had in any other season of his career. An NBA player’s offense often takes a hit when he increases his volume, but Griffin was able to avoid that by shooting well in the three key areas of near the basket, short range and 3-pointers.

In addition to being the main scoring option for this team with a career-high 24.7 points per game, he’s also been the hub that the offense operates around, with his team-leading 5.5 assists per game being 1.3 more than second-place Reggie Jackson. Griffin is the example of the point forward that has become more popular in recent years thanks to the work of players like Giannis Antetokounmpo and Ben Simmons.

Griffin’s game was often based on athleticism during the earlier part of his career, but he has gradually changed that over the last few seasons. This season was the culmination of those changes. He moves well with the ball, and is playing some of the most skillful basketball of his career. He can bring the ball up the court, but he moves better than most bigs do with the ball in those situations.

The major key for him this year has been his 3-point shooting on a team that struggles to shoot them with any accuracy. The Pistons were 30th for much of the year in 3-point accuracy. They’ve moved up the ranks to 21st thanks to the consistency Griffin has shown. For much of the year, he was the team’s second-leading shooter from 3-point range. Thankfully, the remainder of the roster has flourished off him in a system of surrounding the big with a number of shooters.

If it weren’t for Detroit’s record and the elite seasons that Antetokounmpo, James Harden and Paul George were putting up, it’s very reasonable that Griffin would be getting some MVP buzz. He’s helped keep the Pistons in the playoff hunt, and it’s extremely likely they wouldn’t even be in the race if he weren’t playing at this level. He was rightfully voted to the All-Star Game, but he should be on at least the Third Team All-NBA list for his play this year.

Griffin has another two years on his contract, which doesn’t include the player option he has for the 2021-22 season, but this deal no longer looks like the unmovable negative value that it did at the beginning. Griffin may never play at this level again moving forward, but if he’s even close to this season, the Pistons will be getting excellent value.