Why Isn't Blake Griffin Better?

For old times' sake, think back a few years to a time when you were completely convinced that Blake Griffin was going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Imagine him absolutely destroying Timofey Mozgov, Kendrick Perkins and Pau Gasol (twice). 

Griffin was supposed to be an MVP candidate. At the very least, he was expected to emerge as the best power forward in basketball, beating out Kevin Love, LaMarcus Aldridge and all other contenders. 

Fast forward to the present day, and you'll see that I didn't even include Griffin in my rankings of the top 20 players in the NBA. In fact, the Los Angeles Clippers big man didn't make the list of honorable mentions, and I have no regrets about that decision. 

What happened? How did his career arc stagnate in such short fashion? 

Why isn't Blake Griffin better? 

Lack of Offensive Improvement in Key Areas

In January of 2011, the following sentence was written about Griffin: "Even though he plays for the inept Los Angeles Clippers, he still will undoubtedly win the league's MVP award at some point in the near future."

The writer? That would be some guy named Adam Fromal, convinced that it was a good idea to verbalize what everyone else was thinking. In hindsight, it looks like a silly prediction, but it actually made sense at the time. 

Griffin began his career as an absolute offensive force. He wrecked defenses with his dunks, both the ones that came in transition and as the roll man in pick-and-roll sets. The expectation was that he'd eventually develop a complementary post game and mid-range shot. 

Little did we know that the early portion of Griffin's career would be plagued by a decisive lack of offensive improvement.

The above graph shows the power forward's points per possession numbers in certain offensive situations over the years, courtesy of Synergy Sports (subscription required). I would have liked to replace "numbers" with "improvements" in the previous sentence, but Griffin hasn't afforded me that opportunity.  

The one big jump in the positive direction comes in the pick-and-roll game. Even that can't be credited solely to Griffin, as it's more the result of gaining comfort playing alongside Chris Paul, who still holds onto his title as the best point guard in the NBA. 

Most relevant to Blake's improvement—or lack thereof—are two of the groupings: post-ups and spot-ups.

They're the two areas that were originally identified as needing work, but Griffin has actually declined in both situations since his stellar rookie season.

Post-Ups

When Blake gets the ball with his back to the basket, he has two main flaws.

First, he often develops tunnel vision. Despite the fact that he has absolutely fantastic passing skills from the blocks, he sometimes gets this notion that he must score on the play. He morphs from a willing distributor into a black hole, failing to read what the defense throws at him. 

Take this play from the Western Conference playoff series with the Memphis Grizzlies. 

Right off the bat, Blake receives the entry pass and looks like he's in good shape. Marc Gasol, skilled defender that he may be, is attempting to cover him in an isolated post set, and the Clippers are presenting him with many options. 

He can hit DeAndre Jordan as he's cutting toward the basket (he doesn't) or kick it back out to the perimeter if things go awry. 

A few seconds later, things don't look nearly as promising. 

Gasol is still right there, but Zach Randolph and Mike Conley have both swarmed to the paint as the Memphis defense collapses around Griffin. At this point, the sane, logical decision would be kicking the rock out to the top of the key and resetting the play. 

Instead, Griffin attempts an ill-advised drop step, splitting Z-Bo and Gasol. The shot is heavily contested, clangs off the rim and eventually goes out of bounds as Griffin falls to the floor. 

This occasional narrow-mindedness is what gets the young power forward into trouble. For all his fantastic passing skills, he gets overaggressive when he doesn't have the skill to back up his decisions. 

That's a major part of the reason he made just 191 of his 415 attempts in the post during the 2012-13 season and turned it over on 12 percent of his possessions. 

The other problem is that he has a very limited number of moves with his back to the basket. 

Griffin's favorite move is the spin, which he often uses quite effectively. Even when defenders know it's coming, the big man can move so quickly that he still gets right around his man and past the teeth of the defense. 

However, there's a negative there.

Defenders do actually know it's coming, and that makes it quite easy for them to force turnovers. For example, look at how Reggie Evans plays him during a late-season game against the Brooklyn Nets. 

Griffin receives the ball out on the wing with his back to Evans. It's not a clean catch, but he eventually recovers to get into the position you find above. 

As he does just about every single time he receives the ball outside the paint, Griffin faces up. Seriously, it's remarkable how much he does this. And quite frankly, I'm shocked he didn't put the ball over and behind his head in his other trademark position. 

The rest of Brooklyn's defense hasn't really responded to the play yet, but Evans is in perfect guarding position, forcing Griffin to go left instead of right. 

Left goes Griffin. 

Once he reaches the paint, he spins to his right, much to the surprise of absolutely no one. There are a couple things to look out for here. 

Brook Lopez is sliding over into the paint, and he's in perfect position to block the stuffing out of the Clipper should he successfully spin past Evans. The rest of Brooklyn's defenders don't have to do anything.

There is absolutely no sense of urgency because they know that Griffin is in "GRIFFIN MUST SCORE" mode. All the while, Evans has his vision locked on the ball, which the power forward leaves out in space. 

Griffin goes right, but the ball doesn't go with him. 

Evans pilfers it away. 

To make matters worse, no one secures the ball for a while. Evans eventually throws it behind his back to Deron Williams, but not before Griffin ends up sprawled face-first on the sideline. If you look carefully, you can barely make out his shoes. 

Until he gets less predictable with his post moves, Griffin is going to continue making defenders' jobs rather easy.

Developing a consistent jumper could help with this as well. 

Spot-Ups

Each and every year of his career, Griffin has gotten worse in some way as a spot-up shooter. In 2012-13, he attempted 116 shots in the situation, making only 42 of them. That comes out at just 36.2 percent shooting. 

Over the past two seasons, Griffin just hasn't been able to expand his range in any meaningful ways. Below you can see his heat maps. On the left is 2011-12, and 2012-13 is on the right.

Where exactly are the improvements?

It appears as though Griffin became a little bit more effective from the open space between the left baseline and elbow, and he added a nice little baseline jumper from the right. But the changes are minor, at best. 

Over the three years he's spent playing for the Clippers, his shooting simply hasn't improved by any significant margin. The following numbers (percentages and attempts per game) all come from Basketball-Reference: 

	At Rim %	At Rim Shots	3 to 10 %	3 to 10 Shots	10 to 16 %	10 to 16 Shots	16 to 23 %	16 to 23 Shots
2010-11	68.9	6.85	43.2	5.33	29.8	1.72	33.5	2.59
2011-12	75.3	7.79	42.6	5.09	28.0	1.14	37.1	3.76
2012-13	76.6	5.39	46.6	3.86	35.8	1.36	34.0	3.24

Griffin has improved his percentages closer to the basket, but he's also letting it fly more infrequently there. We're just seeing the volume/efficiency tradeoff coming into play here, not any noticeable strides forward. 

Most concerning is his performance from 16 feet and beyond. 

He does occasionally look better—he's hit some nice Tim Duncan-esque turnaround bank shots—but he's still shooting only 34 percent. That's not going to get it done, and it allows opponents to back off of him and dare him to shoot. 

Until Griffin can improve as a spot-up shooter, he won't get the defensive respect he needs to put his physical tools into action. 

Minimal Defensive Improvement

While Griffin's offense hasn't gotten much better during his time in the Association, the same can't be said about his ability to play defense. 

He's gotten far more comfortable operating in space and is starting to understand where he should go when recovering to spot-up shooters or guarding the roll man in a PnR set. You can see that based upon the following points per possession displays, courtesy of Synergy Sports (subscription required). 

However, Griffin is still by no means elite in most of those categories, even in 2012-13. His team defense is also severely lagging behind where it should be after the Clippers allowed 8.1 more points per 100 possessions when he was on the court last year. 

He was best against PnR roll men, allowing them to shoot just 27.9 percent against him. His 0.61 points allowed per possession ranked him 11th in the Association, but teams didn't tend to run that type of play much when Griffin was on the court. He only defended roll men 61 times, including both the regular season and postseason. 

Dwight Howard, for example, guarded roll men 93 times, and he played in four fewer games than Griffin. 

In fact, teams tend to use spot-up shooters and post-up players more than anything else against this particular big man. And while he's adjusting, he's still limited by his lack of physical tools. 

Wait. What? 

Did you just use "lack of physical tools" to describe Blake Griffin? 

I know you're all thinking it. So yes, I did. 

I'm not talking about his speed or jumping ability, but rather his arms. They fall more in line with a Tyrannosaurus Rex than someone like LaMarcus Aldridge, and they severely hinder his ability to successfully contest shots, both at the rim and on the perimeter. 

According to DraftExpress, Blake measured in at 6'8.5" when he was coming out of Oklahoma, and his standing reach was just 8'9". The average standing reach for an NBA player his height, based on the historical measurements, is 2.6 inches higher. 

Height is one of the most deceptive measurements out there. It's completely and utterly irrelevant. 

What good is height except to reach things? Whether you're dunking, shooting over players, blocking shots or grabbing rebounds, it's how high you can reach that actually matters. Standing reach isn't as glamorous a measurement to advertise, but it's far more important. 

Above you can see the standing reaches (in inches) of the prominent power forwards in DraftExpress' database.

Other than Carl Landry, the only players in the database with shorter standing reaches than Griffin are players like Danny Granger, Thaddeus Young and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, guys who have transitioned over to small forward. 

No matter how intelligently Griffin plays in the future, he's limited by his physical gifts. While his jaw-dropping hops allow him to compensate for the dino arms when he's in transition or playing offense, he doesn't get to use the springs in his legs when he's static in the post or running out to close the gap on a spot-up shooter. 

Thanks to his improvements in open space, Griffin has become a better defender over the years. The problem is that he's still not very good on that end of the court and his upside is limited by those short arms. 

There are no Defensive Player of the Year trophies in Griffin's future, and it will be a remarkable improvement if he's ever to spend time on the court without effectively serving as a defensive liability. 

How Blake Griffin Can Become a True Superstar

Right now, Blake Griffin really is a good player. This article has focused largely on the negative aspects of his game, but we can't just completely overlook the positives. 

The power forward is a fantastic athlete who dunks on everything. While some fans have used that to detract from the overall picture, I like to look at it as a positive. The dunk is the most efficient shot in basketball, so every player would be throwing down with a vengeance if he could. 

It's impressive that Griffin can record so many successful slams, not a knock on his other skills. The rest of his game is the knock on the rest of his game, but the dunking isn't.

He's also a great passer, just one who sometimes gets caught not looking for his teammates. According to Hoopdata.com, Pau Gasol was the only qualified power forward with a higher assist rate in 2012-13.   

Although he's very much a deserving All-Star, the Oklahoma product is just forcing us to reevaluate him. While we once thought of him as the future of the league and a sure-fire MVP candidate, those can no longer be the expectations. 

There's still time for Griffin to reach those lofty goals, but the timetable must be pushed back rather significantly. He's never going to become an extremely impactful player on defense, although the development of a great jumper would at least allow his offense to do more than just compensate for his point-preventing deficiencies.

Offensively, there are a number of ways where he can improve. The fixes are clear, but they'll require a lot of work and may take quite a bit of time. He must (A) improve that jumper quickly and (B) start developing a larger arsenal on the blocks, among everything else that was mentioned. 

Again, it's doable.

Give Griffin time and perhaps he'll force the question to transition from "Why isn't he better?" to "When did he get so much better?" 

In the meantime, we'll always be able to enjoy his dunks.