No single individual is responsible for the Los Angeles Clippers’ historic collapse in the Western Conference Semifinals.
It’s popular to blame Chris Paul, team leader, for his squad’s extraordinary Game 6 letdown and listless approach in the following elimination contest. Doc Rivers has received similar flak, and the Clippers’ loss to the Houston Rockets only further amplified his overtly poor track record as a team-builder. Though Paul and Rivers bore the brunt of the criticism, it goes without saying that no one within the Los Angeles organization should be exempt from it. Theirs was a team-wide breakdown.
Blake Griffin, though, has mostly avoided that maelstrom, and it’s not hard to see why. He was a virtuoso throughout the postseason, playing even better than the franchise cornerstone and five-time All-Star he’s become since taking the league by a storm of dunks in 2010-2011. The 26-year-old averaged 25.5 points, 12.7 rebounds, and 6.1 assists per game on 51.1 percent shooting in the playoffs. Not even those incredible numbers, however, do Griffin’s wholly eye-opening spring performance justice.
Prior to the the 2014-2015 season, we ranked Griffin as basketball’s top power forward. Why? For the all-court playmaking prowess he showed during the Clippers cut-short postseason run, and especially when Paul was limited and sidelined by the hamstring injury he suffered in Game 7 against the San Antonio Spurs.
Here’s what we wrote about Griffin before the season tipped off:
The best thing to happen to Griffin’s career might be Chris Paul getting hurt midway through last season. That sounds callous, but it’s actually anything but. Absence of a dominating floor general like Paul forced – or allowed, some would say – the Clippers’ soaring superstar to embrace his all-court playmaking ability, and he hasn’t let go of it since… An unorthodox post bully with a sublime combination of strength and agility, Griffin has become so much more than low block scorer, transition terror, and ball-screen dive man. He showed legitimate point forward skills when Paul was out last season, using a deft handle and wildly underrated court vision to frequently lead fast breaks and take a dominant role in the Clippers’ offense that he won’t ever relinquish.
History won’t remember him as such, but in so many ways Griffin is the next best thing to James and Durant – a big forward with overwhelming physical attributes who combines them with all-court skill almost always reserved for smaller players. Whereas KD is the perimeter-based iteration and LeBron the true inside-outside prototype, Blake is the interior version, a power player by nature that has added a cavalcade of finesse aspects to his game by hardworking nurture.
As the mesmerizing highlight video above makes abundantly clear, Griffin is exactly the player we thought he was – but it took the stakes of the postseason for him to play like it on a possession-by-possession basis. That’s understandable.
The all-encompassing onus Griffin took on during the playoffs was unmatched by anyone but LeBron James, and the Clippers boast enough talent across their roster that it’s unnecessary for him to bear that burden on a consistent basis while grinding through the regular season. He basically admitted that he was conserving energy in a February post for The Players’ Tribune, too.
Fortunately for Los Angeles, though, Griffin doesn’t even need to go full-tilt to be basketball’s top interior playmaker. His ballhandling ability, natural court sense, and growing creative flair have become something resembling a star point guard’s. And needless to say, we can’t wait to watch him continue furthering that development come next season.
[Video via Evin Gualberto] [h/t r/nba]
