On Tuesday morning, Blake Griffin, the first pick in the 2009 NBA Draft by the LA Clippers, announced his retirement from the NBA after 13 seasons.
While there have been better players to suit up for the franchise before, during and after Griffin’s tenure, there is an argument to be made that Griffin, who showed immediately how gifted he was after making his NBA debut in the 2010-11 season as a Slam Dunk Champion, an NBA All-Star and Rookie of the Year, is one of the most important figures in the franchise’s history.
“Blake is just one of the most dynamic players we’ve seen in this league for a long time as far as athletic-wise,” said Clippers head coach Tyronn Lue, who was an assistant under Doc Rivers during Griffin’s best season in 2013-14. “And then one thing he doesn’t get credit for is his passing ability. The way he can pass the basketball at the four position and then as he got older, he plays the small-ball five and improved his 3-point shooting as well. And so he had a great career and injuries are a big part of it that kind of slowed him down the stretch.
“But just for Blake, who’s a big part of the turnaround here with the Clippers: him, CP (Chris Paul) and DeAndre (Jordan), then you bring in JJ Redick and Jamal (Crawford). They’ve played a huge part in the turnaround of the Clippers organization, when they got to the playoffs, 50-win seasons.”
But Griffin’s Lob City postseasons with the Clippers never resulted in a conference finals appearance. The last time Griffin and Paul played in the playoffs together was in 2017, when both faced offseason contract decisions. The Clippers were the fourth seed in the Western Conference, and Griffin suffered a season-ending injury to his right big toe in Game 3 in Utah. The Clippers lost Game 7 of that series. Paul picked up the final year of his option as a condition for getting traded to James Harden’s Houston Rockets.
Griffin was awarded a multi-year maximum contract with the Clippers in the 2017 offseason, believing he would be with the franchise for the rest of his relevant career. But the Clippers traded him the following January to the Detroit Pistons as part of a short-term reloading plan. Two years after Griffin signed his final contract with the Clippers, the franchise introduced Kawhi Leonard and Paul George.
The Clippers are no longer the franchise they were when Griffin arrived. When Griffin missed his rookie season in 2009-10 due to a broken left kneecap suffered after a preseason dunk, many scoffed at the cursed franchise ruining the fortunes of another college star. Donald Sterling was the owner of the team until 2014, when new commissioner Adam Silver banned Sterling for life in the middle of the playoffs. The Clippers made four postseason appearances in their first 33 years in Southern California, winning a total of one series.
The Clippers are set to enter Intuit Dome next season in Inglewood, Calif. It is Steve Ballmer’s greatest accomplishment in 10 seasons as the chief steward of the Clippers. But who will join Ballmer inside the team’s new home is still uncertain.
We know Leonard will be there. The two-time NBA Finals MVP signed the first in-season contract extension of his career in January, solidifying his status as the face of the Clippers. His three-year deal runs through the 2026-27 season. Less certain as the postseason begins? Leonard’s availability. He returned to All-Star status this season for the first time since his 2021 ACL tear, compiling career-highs in field goal percentage (52.5), minutes per game (34.3) and even total dunks (76) while playing his most games (68) since 2017.
But Leonard did not play the final two weeks of the regular season due to what the team called right knee inflammation. While it was encouraging the Clippers went on a four-game winning streak this month to clinch the No. 4 seed out West without him, Leonard’s obfuscatory status underscores the top concern the Clippers have now and have had throughout the Leonard-George era: whether or not their top stars can make it through a postseason healthy together. Will the Clippers even see Leonard and George together beyond this year?
When Leonard signed his contract, he mentioned he made the deal with teammate Paul George in mind. The nine-time NBA All-Star will be 34 years old next month and have played in 14 seasons, but he hasn’t signed an extension yet. George and his representation have had amicable discussions all season long with LA, and George speaks as if he will be in LA next season but nothing is guaranteed.
Unlike fellow future Hall-of-Fame teammates Leonard, James Harden and Russell Westbrook, George has never played in the NBA Finals. Even though the Clippers haven’t actively shopped George, teams are interested in seeing how available he could be. Imagine if George signed an extension or opted out to re-sign with the Clippers, only to find himself traded to a team that isn’t of his choosing. That’s basically what happened with Griffin six years ago.
George could pick up the final year on his option and forgo free agency for another year, but the playoffs will be a factor toward George’s value. That’s where Harden comes in.
The Clippers eschewed having a third star or above-average point guard for most of Leonard and George’s tenure with the Clippers. That philosophy started to bend last year, when Westbrook was added to the team mid-season. But acquiring Harden months after the 2018 MVP picked up the final year of his contract and requested a trade from the Philadelphia 76ers was the kind of move that pushed LA’s chips even further in.
Harden has never missed the playoffs, but his performance in the postseason tends to come with decreased efficiency. His performance with the 76ers last spring under former head coach Doc Rivers against the Boston Celtics in the semifinals underscored this phenomenon: Harden scored more than 40 points in Game 1 (without MVP Joel Embiid) and Game 4 (including a game-winning field goal) wins. But in Games 6 and 7, both losses, Harden had more turnovers (10) than field goals made (7-of-27, 25.9 percent).
“I’ve had some not great games, but I have some really good games,” Harden said this week at practice. “So for me, I think the goal is to win and that’s the only thing that I’m missing at the highest level as far as my NBA career.”
Harden’s arrival put Westbrook in a position where he had to accept fewer minutes and touches than any season in his 16-year career. Westbrook still believes that he can play and produce at a starter level. His role as a second-unit player is a luxury and a necessity for this Clippers team, but one that would be difficult to maintain.
To get to the conference finals will require the Clippers to show they haven’t lost their standing in the West. They have dismissed Luka Dončić’s Dallas Mavericks twice before in this era; losing to them now would be a significant sign of regression. The winner of the Mavericks-Clippers series will face the winner of the opening series featuring top-seed Oklahoma City, and if the Clippers meet Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s Thunder, then that is a head-on collision with the franchise that the Clippers mortgaged their future with to acquire George to pair with Leonard in 2019. Gilgeous-Alexander was a Clippers lottery pick obtained with a first-round pick from the 2018 Griffin trade to Detroit before he was flipped to Oklahoma City as part of the deal to bring George to LA.
What the Clippers have done now, extending an active league-leading streak of winning seasons to 13 this year, started with Griffin’s presence. But this era led by Leonard and George, this championship window, is closing and this postseason is a point of reckoning. This is the last best chance for the Clippers to get it right.
(Top photo of Leonard and George: Adam Pantozzi / NBAE via Getty Images)
