NBA Rumors: Revealed—Why Steve Nash Didn't Want To Play Blake Griffin

Blake Griffin is still available on the free agent market as we approach the start of training camp in a couple of weeks. The 12-year veteran is a 6-time All-Star, as recently as 2019 with the Detroit Pistons. He isn't the high-flyer he once was, but he's transitioned his game to a more earth-bound version, and can still be very effective.   

Just don't tell Steve Nash that. 

Griffin spent the second half of the 2020-21 season and all of last year with the Brooklyn Nets. But he seemed to lose the confidence of head coach Nash, and ended up nailed to the bench in the second half of the season more often than not. 

NBA insider Kristian Winfield revealed on The Athletic's NBA Show podcast the reasons behind it:

There’s something about Blake Griffin that Steve Nash doesn’t like... [He] doesn’t feel [Griffin] is deserving of minutes on a basketball floor. I mean you had Blake Griffin basically just wasting away most of the second half of the season because he couldn’t hit a shot. That’s what it was, he missed, I don’t remember, it must have been twenty or twenty-plus straight open threes to the point where people were just daring him to shoot. He did everything else pretty well, we're talking about hustle, grabbing rebounds, making the right passes... but for Steve it boiled down to, he just couldn’t hit an open shot, and that was a liability.

Griffin hit 38% of his threes after signing as a free agent in March of the 2020-21 season. But that fell off precipitously last year, as Griffin hit just 26% from long range, and his scoring production fell to just 6.4 points per game (in about 17 minutes). 

With Ben Simmons expected to be an actual playing member of the Nets this season, having teammates on the floor that actually make shots is of the utmost importance. 

The Nets also recently signed another power forward to essentially take Griffin's role. 

Photos: Jeffrey Swinger-USA TODAY Sports, David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports