Blake Griffin is one unlucky guy
Since he first came in the league, Blake Griffin was known to be an injury prone player. He missed his entire first year with the Clippers because of a broken left kneecap. That left knee would end up being the biggest enemy of his career, as it persisted time and time again, keeping him back from his game.
Griffin was a “dunk-only” type of player when he was in his first years of his career, he didn’t really have a jump-shot, not to mention a 3-point shot, and this was viewed as a big flaw of his game by the analysts. This is one of the main reasons for his knee being hurt much of the time. Despite of all that, he was still a number 1 draft pick, and it’s safe to say that he lived up to the expectations, resurrecting the Clippers and making them a playoff contender, as he was dunking on everyone and from everywhere.
The LA team seemed to be cursed, though, as they had an injury almost every year during the season or in the playoffs, especially. Griffin’s injury reports continued in 2012. During the minicamps for the Olympics, he teared his meniscus, then in 2014 he suffered a stress fracture. After those unfortunately accidents, Griffin took a major blow as he broke his hand during the 2016 playoffs, a season in which they had big chances to beat the Warriors and reach the Finals. It was just so unlucky for him and the Clippers, once again. Next year, guess what, he got injured once again in the postseason, this time with a toe injury. It represented one of the biggest hits on the Clippers trio, and as a consequence, they started to disband, as Paul moved to Houston. An year later, Griffin was shipped to Detroit without him wanting to do that, and the last piece of that little “history”, DeAndre Jordan, ultimately got traded too.
Throughout time, he seemed to work hard on the shooting aspect of his game in order to earn the money he wanted to, and we saw that hard work paying off in this season. A career one for Blake, as he was selected for the All Star Game for the first time in 4 years. We could see off-the-dribble 3s, pull-ups from mid-range, dribble-penetration, things that couldn’t be seen in his game some time ago. On all that you add an average of 24,5 PPG, 7,5 RPG and 5,4 APG, and you can build his case for a max contract this summer. The only things that are unclear at this moment, unluckily for him, are the injuries and how they will affect his game going forward, given the fact that, coming into the next season, he will be 30 years old.
Lately, he sat the last games of the season and the first one of the playoffs because of a sore left knee, and is expected to miss some more, if not all the games from the First Round of the playoffs. We just could imagine how down and frustrated he is at the moment, given the tremendous season that he just had, not to be able to play for the contest which you played all year for. The Pistons are simply trash now, they don’t really seem to have any idea on how to get into offense without Griffin. Ok, we know, they are facing the league’s best record holder, but in spite of all that, with Griffin on the court, they could at least take a game from this series, without him… this looks to go 4-0 easily for the Bucks. Injuries are part of the game, sadly, you just can’t prevent them if you are willing to play hard, and Griffin (not to even mention Derrick Rose) is one big unlucky guy when it comes to that.
