Injuries have opened up playing time for Blake Griffin with the Brooklyn Nets, but how well has he played and will he have a role to play come playoff time?
Since joining the Brooklyn Nets after a buyout with the Detroit Pistons, Blake Griffin’s role has been up and down, trying to play next to the three superstars, then playing without them, then fitting in behind LaMarcus Aldridge, and finally taking over his role after he suddenly retired.
In maybe a precursor to white boy summer, it’s been wild. But it has also only been 14 games, still quite a small sample size.
In that small sample size, Blake has amassed averages of 8.9 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 2.4 assists.
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His 3-point attempt numbers have dropped from 9.7 per 100 possessions to 6.4 per 100 but his shooting percentages have leaped from god-awful in his past two Detroit campaigns to passable with Brooklyn.
His past two seasons as a Piston were a bit like that early 2010s Dos Equis meme:
"“I don’t always play games, but when I do, I make sure to bring my team down.”"
Thankfully for the Nets, he has been much more effective in a limited role. In those 14 games, he has an effective field goal percentage of 55 percent, a number only eclipsed in the 2011-12 season.
Is there room for a role on the Brooklyn Nets in the playoffs?
This was somewhat of a good story for Griffin, coming to a star-studded team, taking a smaller role, and trying to get himself some hardware – we’ve all seen it before. But since Aldridge’s announced his retirement, Blake’s time on the court has jumped and he’s being asked to do a bit more for a team that has spent more time without its stars than with.
In those games following LMA’s announcement, Blake’s averaging 23.4 minutes per contest while averaging 11 points on 8.4 shots per contest.
With the lowest usage percentage of his career according to Cleaning the Glass, Griffin clearly isn’t the nucleus of an offense he once used to be, but that’s completely fine, he can still do what he does and punish matchups.
When he gets a switch onto a mismatch (or even if the defense gives him a favorable matchup) he can still score, as seen above when a pick-and-roll sees Payton Pritchard guarding him one-on-one.
It’s rather helpful being a tall, strong gentleman when it comes to the game of basketball.
And if the double does come, Blake made living make cerebral plays as a “point forward” in the latter stages of his career.
If you’re doubling on a Griffin post-up in 2021, maybe it’s time to double-check the scouting report.
I believe the best offensive version of Blake is what we’ve seen. His time as a No. 1 option is in the rear-view mirror and he’s now much lower on the totem pole.
It’s a smart decision by Blake to play next to Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant, and James Harden: they all attract plenty of attention on the court, so Blake can fill the cracks those three create and get his points served to him on a silver platter.
Those three have obviously had their own health issues and there isn’t much of a sample size to glean numbers from, but in his 148 minutes next to Kyrie, the team is a plus-9.5 per 100 possessions according to Basketball-Reference.
The other side of the court is a bit more of a concern.
Blake has never been known as a defensive plus and his regressing athleticism only makes him worse on that end.
Surprisingly, since landing in Brooklyn, his team numbers aren’t atrocious on defense. Yes, opponents get out in transition more, they shoot slightly better at the rim and from behind the arc but compared with other big man defenders, it’s not the end of the world and his offensive numbers make up for it.
From a surface-level perspective, when Griffin is on the court and in a Brooklyn jersey, the team has a 116 offensive rating and 111 defensive rating.
The issue is, he’s prone to getting cooked on that end when asked to defend in space.
And as a help defender, he is… uninspiring.
I would show you some more clips from that New Orleans game but you can probably imagine how it went, Zion Williamson waltzing to the rim and rising up with supreme confidence.
Ironically, it was just a decade ago that Blake was doing the exact same thing, now he’s on the other end of it. I like to think that somewhere, Timofey Mozgov is out there smiling.
His defense might be what sees him sitting on the bench for an important playoff stretch.
In the playoffs, teams focus a lot more on matchups and will consistently abuse a matchup if they think they have an advantage. For four straight years, the Cleveland Cavaliers tried to put Steph Curry in the pick-and-roll and well, it worked once.
If Griffin is on the court against some of the Eastern Conference’s best players, he’s going to get picked apart each time down the court. If he isn’t finding cracks in the defense to spread out from three or spend some time looking for small guys switching on to him, his impact diminishes.
For Brooklyn’s sake, when the team is fully healthy, there isn’t much of a need for Griffin.
With Durant (hopefully) at full strength, the Nets can bring his minutes up, play more Jeff Green (who has been awesome) and scramble together the rest of the big man minutes with Blake, Nicolas Claxton, and DeAndre Jordan.
Griffin’s offensive plus isn’t enough to outvalue the defensive gains by playing Green or Claxton. If Blake’s offensive role is small anyway, it doesn’t matter if it’s Blake or another low-usage player.
To answer the title of the article; no, Blake Griffin doesn’t have a role on the Nets title run. He has a role in the regular season, absorbing minutes while the superstars rest or sit out with injury, but that’s as far as it goes.
I could be critical and say that it’s a waste of roster spot, spending it on Blake, a non-playoff player. Being realistic though, I understand that the superstars on this roster like Blake, want to play with him, and likely asked for it to happen.
For their sake, let’s hope they have enough firepower to get it done when the Finals roll around.