Nets forward Blake Griffin has been spitting the truth and nothing but the truth of late. He is not sugar coating anything.
Recently on JJ Redick’s “The Old Man and Three” podcast, Griffin hinted his Detroit Pistons teams did not have a roster that could win a championship. To add insult to injury, the 32-year-old knows his departure made things worse:
“It doesn’t matter if you played for eight years and never missed a game, if you go out on a bad note that’s the only thing fans remember.
Griffin is remembered more for his time with the Los Angeles Clippers, the team he played for before the Pistons. Instead of him leaving on a bad note, it was the Clippers organization that left Griffin on a bad note by trading him. Still, the former Oklahoma star admitted that it was indeed that franchise where he could have won a championship. Specifically, in 2016 and 2017:
“Those two years I think were the years that we really could have won. Before that we weren’t ready. I don’t think we had the team.”
Although those teams came up short, the 2015 Los Angeles Clippers squad could have also achieved more. Despite downplaying that year’s roster, Griffin put the blame of that year’s success on Chris Paul’s injury during the postseason:
“Also remember we had to play without CP (Chris Paul) those first two games of the Houston series. When you take him off the floor now everybody’s job has to go up exponentially because he did so much for us so I think that was a part of it, too.”
Los Angeles went on to lose that series to the Rockets, but the thought of what could have been will always linger in Griffin’s head.
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