Blake Griffin fell way short of what LA Clippers needed vs. Warriors
Blake Griffin was completely rattled against the Golden State Warriors and Draymond Green in the LA Clippers’ 115-98 loss on Wednesday, failing to give L.A. anything they needed from him.
Blake Griffin has been having a terrific season. He’s returned fully healthy to serve as the LA Clippers‘ leading scorer once again, has upped his rebounding to nine boards per game (his highest mark since 2013-14), and has been more locked in and aware defensively. It’s hard to complain with a stat line of 20.7 points, nine rebounds and 4.6 assists per game with a 23.3 PER. But in the Clippers’ crushing 115-98 loss to the Golden State Warriors on Wednesday night, Blake was far from the Blake he needed to be. In every way.
You only have to scan the box score quickly to see how poor his performance was. He was just shy of a double-double with 12 points and nine rebounds, but finished with only two assists and, most importantly, shot 5-of-20 from the floor and turned the ball over a season-high seven times.
He’d only reached five turnovers in a game once so far this season, and it was easily his worst shooting performance at 25 percent from the floor as well.
He had five turnovers in the first quarter alone. It was nightmarish to begin with and still finished out as one of the worst games you’ll probably see Griffin play.
It’s not just the numbers we can see in the box score, though. It’s the manner in which he turned the ball over and looked so lost in areas of the court where he normally thrives that was so startling to see.
(This put-back dunk on Draymond Green was one of Griffin’s lone highlights, and sadly wasn’t nearly enough to make up for the rest of his performance).
Griffin looked like a shell of himself as a decision maker on offense. He was out of control and indecisive when facing up opponents or driving to the rim, throwing out several passes when barreling down the lane rather than forcing his way through players to finish or attempt to draw fouls.
On top of that, his post-ups were terrible.
There’s no other way to describe it as he failed to by his usual physical self and assert his authority down low against Draymond Green, which only encouraged Griffin to pass more. Unfortunately for the Clippers (they shot 39 percent for the game), many of his passes were hurried, unnecessary, and resulted in plenty of his turnovers as the Warriors’ defense hounded in around him to prepare for passes out of the post.
Even when he had mismatches against smaller players, the type of mismatches where he’d usually back down and power through for a close hook shot, Griffin didn’t always opt to do so and settled for more jumpers instead.
He was rattled, and Draymond certainly added a great performance to his Defensive Player of the Year campaign highlight reel with some of the pressure he was applying to bother Griffin’s confidence so much. When that was the case, and Green either forced a miss, forced Griffin to be tentative and fall back on poor, indecisive footwork, or force an errant pass outside to give the likes of Stephen Curry easy steals, the Clippers fell out of the game.
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It placed so much more pressure on their defense and for Chris Paul to be aggressive, which he wasn’t most of the time with only 15 points (50 percent shooting is fine, but there weren’t enough attempts), six rebounds and five assists.
Griffin is needed to be a dominant force against the Warriors. We saw it briefly when he hammered in a put-back dunk straight over the top of Green and established low post position in transition to score a quick basket on a feed from Paul at one point. Griffin needs to be the anchor inside to attack the Warriors’ lacking size (albeit something that’s made far less worrying when they have the freakish defensive monster that is Draymond) and draw fouls, ideally forcing them to turn to their shallower bench in the process.
On Wednesday, though, that wasn’t the case whatsoever. Now, Blake Griffin will look to rediscover his confidence in a better matchup against the New Orleans Pelicans at Staples Center on Saturday.
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As for upcoming games against the Warriors, the LA Clippers still have three more contests against them in the regular season, with the next one coming on January 28th in Golden State’s Oracle Arena. Maybe we’ll see these rivals have a more competitive matchup next time. After all, it can’t get much worse than this.
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