The Blake Griffin Situation

Blake Griffin screwed up big time. I mean, everybody does once in a while but when you are professional athlete you’ll be under the microscope, you represent a sport, a brand and for some reason there are people that look up to you like you were some kind of role model for kids.

Judging Blake as a person is stupid, it doesns’t matter, this doesn’t make him a bad guy or an asshole or anything like that, he screwed up, that’s it. On the other hand, as a professional athlete you do have some responsibilities, even more when you are a franchise player like Blake. You can’t put yourself in a situation that can end up with a broken hand, that’s plain stupid. How can people take what you say about winning a Championship seriously if you put everything to lose in a immature fight like that?

The Clippers already have a reputation, whatever it is, it’s all about failure, all sort of things going wrong, players getting injured, not being able to close series, never getting to the Finals and so on.

The Incident

There were 4 people: Blake, Matias Testi, DJ and the athletic trainer Joe Resendez. I fail to understand how didn’t the other two stop the fight. I mean, even before that there is something that doesn’t make any sense. If there was a punch inside the restaurant, how did they even allow them to continue it outside? And then DJ say he thought he should had done more to stop his friends — of doing such a stupid thing? No kidding.

Blake was about to rejoin the team after a partial tear of his quad tendon, probably for the Lakers’ game at home but now it’s going to be another two months before he can get back to the team. There have been so many stupid articles about Blake, the Clippers, trades, blowing up the team but I’ll address that in another time.

No All-Star for Blake

I don’t even know when the coaches finished the vote for the All-Star reserves but this news certainly didn’t help Blake. Griffin was having another career year, much more controlled and much more decisive but being away prior to the All-Star certainly worked against him. Some could argue that he missed too many games, but that’s funny because there are some other All-Stars that missed just as many games as Blake but since it wasn’t continuously like Blake, the perception is different but I get it.

Anyway, I think that Blake was the only active player that participated as an All-Star every year of his career, including his rookie season. But well, not anymore. It’s kind of weird that this happens in his best year so far but hey, that’s what you get when you screw up.

Why so angry?

This is something I noticed way before this incident. I have no idea why but this season Blake seemed a bit out of control, his frustrations were turning into physical demonstrations of anger.

A lot of people didn’t notice it since Blake already has this reputation of complaining, whining and getting T’d up but it looked different. But I can remember one article that asked Blake to chill out a bit.

During the Bulls game, for instance, Blake ended up hitting Taj Gibson and he was ejected. From my perspective, I wouldn’t say that Blake didthat on purpose, he wasn’t really thinking “I’m want to hurt him” but, if you take the context into account, he did so out of frustration.

Griffin was getting frustrated with the calls and the physicality and he came back to defense a complaining. Him and Gibson got a bit tangled up while battling for position, that’s a normal play and things moved on. But then, when defending Taj on the post, he pump fakes Blake and he tries to swap the ball from Gibson but end up hitting his head instead. Flagrant 2, Blake is ejected.

As I said, I don’t think it was his intention to hurt but Blake was frustrated and it got the best out of him, out of frustration he ended up putting more force to his swing and he hit Taj pretty hard. Once again you see Blake losing a bit of control and you can see by his reaction that as soon as he did that, he realized what he had done and he went to help Taj Gibson immediately and check if he was ok.

But this was not the only time that Blake reacted out of frustration and compromised the Clippers. He had previously overreacted over a non-call, got his second technical and was ejected. But that wasn’t the only other situation as well.

01/31 update: it seems that Blake was frustrated for not being back already, since he was expecting to play during the roadtrip. So he was complaining about it during the dinner and it seems that Testi started to tease Blake for whining so much and that escalated to punches.

If this is true, this makes me question even more: why so angry? I’m quite divided. I thought Blake was more patient about it, even more with such injury but at the same time, Blake has bitching so much about everything that it seems quite possible that he was really whining about that.

Wake up Call

I don’t even know how this started, when it started, maybe it was two season ago, I don’t know. But I remember a rookie that was very talented, athletic and that led by example, he was already good but he worked the hardest, he hustled like crazy, he was always playing at 1000%.

Blake matured his game, it was an awkward transition but now he doesn’t hesitate anymore, you can feel that he is starting to see and understand the game, he is letting the game come to him. But somehow, a part of his mental state has regressed. Blake took a lot of cheapy shots, a lot. Then, one day he became fed up, which is natural, it actually happened later than anyone imagined but then, it became a habit of complaining about everything, whining and bitching about every call. And I really don’t know why it turned out like that. But he also backed down and stopped throwing down and dunking like he used to.

Somehow, this season it’s a level higher and it’s starting to work against Blake, it’s starting to hurt the team, and as one of the team’s leader, he needs to be better. Young Blake led by example and he learned how to be vocal and be better leader, somehow he lost a bit of track of that.

Maybe this incident can serve as a wake up call for Blake and I say that because I know he can be better and I know that the Clippers will go as far as Blake can lead them. So I hope that all this frustration and anger building up — until this stupid fight that ended in a broken hand — can make Blake reevaluate things a bit, put things into perspective and try to get back on track. Regardless if the regret, shame and responsibility will help him mature, he needs to get back more focused. They have an objective and at such a high level, with opponents like the Spurs and Warriors, you don’t have the luxury to not be at your best.

Silverlining

Besides the mental state of Blake, it would be nice if Blake can work like crazy with his left hand, hook shots, floaters, finishing around the rim, you name it, at least this way, something good can come from this injury.

Another thing is that from what I researched, a partial tear of the quad tendon can be quite dangerous and tricky, if not fully healed, in can lead to a complete tear and surgery. This type of injury is one of those that unconsciously makes you compensate and force the opposite part of your body, leading to tendinitis, overuse of some muscle, etc. creating a series of nagging injuries.

So at least we’ll know that Blake will be fully healed from this other injury. The bad is that he will come back with less than a month before the Playoffs and in these few weeks he has to get in rhythm, game shape and get in sync with the rest of the team, but at least he will have fresh legs.

So, we’ll see what happens.