Section 215
Fansided

Philadelphia 76ers: I ain’t afraid of Blake Griffin on the Nets

By Matty Breisch

(Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)
(Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images) /
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When news broke that Blake Griffin had officially agreed to a buyout with the Detroit Pistons, it was almost as surprising as it was inevitable.

For all of the hype, love, and Broad City cameos Griffin sopped up during his All-Star-studded tenure with Los Angeles’ other basketball franchise, the former first overall pick in the 2009 NBA Draft has been cast off to the Siberia of the NBA known as Detroit by no fault of his own and has wasted the final years of his prime on a team with a perpetual non-winning record.

While no player has ever been bought out of a max-level contract with a $38.9 million player option before in NBA history, making such a buyout presumably a logistics nightmare, if there was ever a player willing to pay back $13.3 million to take control of the final act of his basketball career, Griffin certainly fits the bill.

When you’ve already earned north of $192 million over your NBA career, shelling out $13.3 million to chase a chip isn’t as radical as it would be for you and me.

So naturally, once Griffin clears waivers this weekend, he’ll presumably be in high demand by teams around the league looking for a big-named boost to push their team over the top and sell out whatever limited seats are allowed to be sold at home games in the back half of the 2020-21 season, including teams like the Sixers, Lakers, and Nets, right?

Sure, I imagine Griffin’s representatives will be fielding quite a few calls over the forthcoming All-Star weekend, but if Shams Charania‘s reporting is legit, it sounds like the Brooklyn Nets are the front runners for the former-high-flyer’s services.

Does that stink for the Philadelphia 76ers, who too could surely use a stretch four like Griffin in their playoff rotation? Sure, but that doesn’t mean the Nets will suddenly become unbeatable with Griffin in their colors, not ours. If anything, the idea of targeting Griffin over a more traditional center may hurt the Nets’ abilities to stop the Sixers’ biggest threat should they have to duke it out in an Eastern Conference Finals series.

Blake Griffin can’t overcome Joel Embiid in a series versus the Philadelphia 76ers.

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No matter how you slice it, the Brooklyn Nets are a weirdly composed NBA team.

If they were a jazz song, they’d be in 5/8 with an 11/16 refrain. If they were a sandwich, they’d be Jayson Tatum’s chicken bacon ranch sans the bottom bun. And if they were Dodge Challengers, they’d be one without headlights.

Sure, all of those things are technically good if pulled off correctly, but they can get messy real quick if things aren’t executed perfectly.

Trotting out a starting five featuring two point guards, a 3 point shooting wing, and a pair of bigs who aren’t traditionally suited for defending in the paint, the Nets are averaging the most points per game of any team in the NBA at 121.1 but are also giving up an average of 116.1 ppg, which ranks 27th out of 30 teams. They’ve given up 28 points to Nikola Vukavic, 18 points to Richaun Holmes, and 18 more to Domantas Sabonis over the last month, and surrendered 33 to Joel Embiid in a losing effort back on February 6th.

But hey, when you’ve got Jeff Green and DeAndre Jordan logging the majority of your snaps at center, what can you really expect?

So naturally, with a need at center, a lack of both money and assets to make a trade, and no guarantee that any of the other “big named” bigs are actually able to secure a buyout, the Nets make sense as a signing partner for Blake Griffin.

Zach Lowe suggested as much on a recent episode of his podcast “The Lowe Post” where he disclosed that the Nets were one of two teams who liked the idea of signing Griffin to explicitly serve as a small-ball center.

That idea isn’t a bad one by any stretch of the imagination.

While I imagine both Steve Nash and Griffin would surely still like to get him some run next to former Lob City partner in crime DeAndre Jordan, kicking Blake inside would allow the Nets to run a faster offense with four shooters on the court, all the while maintaining some additional size in the paint that Jeff Green simply doesn’t provide.

That, surely, will be enough to allow the Nets to bulldoze teams like the Celtics, Knicks, and Bucks who lack a truly elite big man in the paint, but does it really help to neutralize the biggest – literally – roadblock to the NBA Finals? Yeah, something tells me Embiid won’t be too worried about having to put a move on Griffin on the way to the basket.

Though we don’t have a game in the 2020-21 NBA season to evaluate Griffin versus Embiid, as the former was inactive in the Sixers’ first bout against the Pistons, and the latter was inactive for Game 2, we can find plenty of tape of Griffin defending in the paint, and needless to say, it isn’t very impressive.

Take, for example, Griffin’s showing against Bam Adebayo and the Miami Heat in the bout versus Detroit on January 16th. This game saw Griffin scoring 15 points, his fourth-highest mark on the season, and finish out the contest with a +/- of +19, his second-best mark on the season, but you wouldn’t know it from watching the game – or the highlights below if you didn’t catch the contest – as the big man was pretty much a non-factor in the 20 point win.

Once lauded for his athleticism and energy, Griffin now lumbers around the court like a player 50 pounds heavier. He largely stands pat on the wings waiting for an open 3, seldom provides support on defense, and even more rarely crashes the boards for a contested rebound. Call it a symptom of athletic decay or simple disinterest in playing for the Pistons, but Griffin looked more like a $3.5 million player than a $35 million man and was thoroughly outperformed by Adebayo anytime the two met on the court.

Is this game an outlier? Maybe so, but expecting Griffin to somehow become a defensive stopper at the five after spending the prime of his career playing the four doesn’t really address the Nets’ biggest need and thus feels like a marginal move that doesn’t solve the team’s biggest problem.

Now make no mistake about it; Griffin can certainly still play at the NBA level. With the motivation to compete for a champion, I imagine Griffin will be able to put up 15 and five without much problem and provide some additional frontcourt playmaking to boot.

Though he probably wouldn’t want to, considering his not fantastic relationship with Doc Rivers, modern-day Griffin would do a solid job filling the stretch four-role the Sixers have been using Mike Scott in when healthy during the 2020-21 season but would reportedly like to upgrade, even if his 31.5 3 point shooting percentage is a tad underwhelming.

Then again, considering the state of the Sixers’ bench scoring through the first half of the regular season, the idea of having two double-digit reserve scorers may just be too good to pass up.

Next. Matisse Thybulle just needs to be Danny Green on offense. dark

In the right role, Blake Griffin could have a long and fruitful final act to his NBA career. He could serve as a solid do-it-all forward capable of still making the occasional highlight-reel play while providing support for his teammates both on and off the court. But after watching the Brooklyn Nets struggle to shut down elite opposing centers with their underwhelming duo of DeAndre Jordan and Jeff Green, does anyone really think Griffin is going to want to bang around with Joel Hans Embiid for a seven-game series a few months down the line? Sign with the Trail Blazers, play alongside Enes Kanter, Carmelo Anthony, and our old pal Robert Covington and get ready for Double Cross with Blake Griffin this spring on TruTv. That seems like an easier first path back to NBA prominence.