Question Marks Surround Future No.1 Pick Griffin

The NBA Draft will be conducted in New York on Thursday, and the drama has already been taken away with regards to whom the Los Angeles Clippers will select with the first-overall pick. Oklahoma forward Blake Griffin — widely considered to be the best player available in the draft — will be the choice. The Clippers said so the minute they won the lottery, and they have also said that they are not willing to trade the pick.

The question now becomes just how good Griffin will be for the Clippers. Currently, there are more than a few question marks surrounding his game and why he will be the No.1 pick.

First off, the 2009 draft class is weak. Very weak. In fact, many analysts are calling this the worst NBA draft class in the last 25 years, and I would agree. There seems to be no debate about who the best player available is, and though Griffin is a very talented player, he really is the only player executives can justify selecting with the first-overall pick. After Griffin, there are no players that jump off the page. No one that would make a team attempt trade up for the No.1 pick because his a player that can turn a franchise around.

As a result, Griffin will be the No.1 pick, no questions asked. Analysts will spend all of Thursday discussing how good of a player Griffin is, and there is certain to be high levels of hyperbole involved, as there tends to be with every No.1 pick. But can Griffin live up to that hype?

 

Second, Griffin is a very athletic and raw player, to say the least. His athleticism is off the charts. At his size, it’s amazing the things he can do with the basketball, especially his leaping ability. He used his athleticism to his advantage in college, and that is how he scored most of his points.

He is a 6-foot-10, 251 pound forward. It is hard to know if he truly is 6-foot-10, because most colleges tend to exaggerate on player’s height. In the NBA, his body type puts him in between the small and power forward positions. His game, however, points heavily toward power forward. Griffin was a very good rebounder at Oklahoma, averaging 14.4 rebounds per game. The problem with that is that he used his size and will to bully around smaller players in college. In the NBA he will only be facing bigger players who want the ball just as much as he does. Currently, rebounding is the best aspect of his game. Moreover, it is the only part of his game that is developed. That is why the best description of Griffin would most likely be “raw.”

The negative facets of his game are not good signs, at all. For one, he showed no signs of knowing how to play any defense, whatsoever. The excuse that has been floating around is that his head coach, Jeff Capel, told him not to play defense because he didn’t want Griffin to get into foul trouble. That excuse is Bologna, and it speaks to Griffin’s knowledge of the game. If he were a good defender, he would know how to play without fouling. The fact that Capel was worried about Griffin getting in foul trouble speaks volumes about just how good of a defender he was. Plus, he went up against smaller players all throughout college, and the fact that he was not able to bully them around and pile up on blocks is disconcerting.

Offensively, he did average 22.7 points per game, but I would be willing to bet that nearly half of those points came off of layups and dunks. He is a comparable to Dwight Howard in the fact that his offensive game is extremely raw. He is a good passer, but some of the passes that he made out of the paint are ones that you and I could have made; nothing special. At no point at Oklahoma did he show any semblance of a jump shot — not even a 10-footer. Most of his game was built on facing up his defender and blowing right past them. He showed no signs of having even a serviceable post-game, either. Other than Howard, I can’t name one star player in the NBA who cannot hit at the bare minimum a ten-foot jump shot. Griffin will have to develop that quickly if he is going to have any chance of succeeding in the NBA.

Another thing to look at is Griffin’s toughness. While there is no way you can question his desire — he suffered a concussion against Oklahoma St., came back later that week and dove for a ball that was headed out of bounds. But his opponents continually took cheap shots at him, and not once did he respond. It certainly is good that he was able to keep his composure and avoid being suspended, but it is concerning that he did not show the fire to go after a player that took a shot at him. Whether it was an elbow or a body shot, something was always being thrown at Griffin. All it would have taken to stop the cheap shots would have been for him to respond, just once. He needed to send the message that he wasn’t going to take that kind of stuff from anyone. Instead, he stood there, took it and let his brother, Taylor, confront the guys making dirty plays. And at the next level, players will bully him around every night. Will he continue to get pushed around? The NBA is a game for tough guys — not guys who are willing to get beat up and not fight back.

The Clippers believe that Griffin is the best available player in this draft, and he very well may be, but that doesn’t necessarily justify the selection. Even with all of the question marks surrounding Griffin, the Clippers will select him, and pray that he doesn’t turn out to be the next Michael Olowakandi. Everyone knows they can afford for that to happen.