Blake Griffin, always a contradictory player, retires from NBA

Blake Griffin, former star power forward of the Los Angeles Clippers and the Detroit Pistons, announced his retirement on Instagram on Tuesday.

"I never envisioned myself as the guy who would have a 'letter to basketball' retirement announcement…" Griffin posted, "and I'm still not going to be that guy. But as I reflected my career, the one feeling I kept coming back to and the one thing I wanted to express was thankfulness."

Griffin was drafted by the Clippers with the first-overall pick in 2009, but he spent the 2009-10 season recovering from a surgery on his broken left kneecap. The last time he played in an NBA game was on April 25, 2023 for the Boston Celtics. Therefore, technically, his career lasted 13 seasons.

As a six-time All-Star and five-time All-NBA Teams selection, Griffin averaged 19 points, eight rebounds and four assists per game after playing for four teams: the Clippers, the Pistons, the Brooklyn Nets and the Celtics. He contributed most of his prime to the Clippers, between 2010 and 2017. After Chirs Paul joined the team in 2011, the two plus DeAndre Jordan earned their team the nickname "Lob City" with constant alley-oop dunks.

Dunking has been Griffin's signature for most of his career. His power, leaping ability and explosiveness enabled him to leave a series of posters of him finishing dunks on many big men including Kendrick Perkins, Timofey Mozgov and Pau Gasol.

However, despite his remarkable size, power and athleticism, Griffin has never been a rebound monster, he only averaged double-digit rebounds in the first two seasons of his career. Neither was he a pure finisher who usually averaged higher than his 49.3 percent from the field per game in his career. Griffin did more than just putting teammates' passes into the hoop. In fact, he was often the passer to set up plays, which explained his average of four assists per game in his career.

Griffin was such a contradictory player in his best years. He finished in the third place the NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) race during the 2013-14 campaign, meaning that most people believed that he was the third-best player of the league back then, next to only Kevin Durant (MVP) and LeBron James, both in their prime. Meanwhile, he was selected into the All-NBA Second Team thrice and the Third Team once during his days with the Clippers. In other words, he was seen as a top-10 or top-15 player in the league those years.

Nonetheless, the Clippers never made the Western Conference Finals under the leadership of Paul, Griffin and Jordan. Of the three, Griffin might have carried the biggest expectations of the team, but was the biggest disappointment to them because he always failed to make the decisive plays for the team during clutch time. Griffin never developed good enough offensive skills for isolation, especially in the low post. Instead, he chose to improve his shooting range, dribbling and passing skills. However, even if he did those better than many big men, he didn't do them well enough to make a difference for the Clippers.

That's why the Clippers traded Griffin to the Pistons in January 2018, only half a year after signing him to a five-year, $173 million contract extension. He was selected for both the All-Star Game and the All-NBA Third Team in the 2018-19 season as well, but both for the last time in his career. The Pistons made the playoffs in that campaign but Griffin suffered another left knee injury before the postseason began. He forced himself to play in the Eastern Conference first-round series against the Milwaukee Bucks. That decision became the turning point of his career as he continued to slip from then on until having to become a role player in the Nets and the Celtics.

"Blake was a big part of the turnaround here," Tyronn Lue, the current head coach of the Clippers, said. "Blake was one of the most dynamic players we've seen in this league for a long time athletic-wise. One thing he doesn't get credit for is his passing ability. He had a great career."