The Blake Griffin trade shows how little teams care about a player’s “loyalty.”
When the news about Blake Griffin’s trade broke out a couple of days ago, I was more focused on the implications of the human rather than the basketball side. It’s pretty automatic to value a trade based on the players involved, trying to understand who won and who lost in the deal. But the Blake Griffin trade highlights another aspect of the NBA world that is often used against players but very rarely against the teams: loyalty.
Blake Griffin signed a five-year $173 million contract extension with the Clippers over the summer having people believe that he was going to stay in LA for the rest of his career. The team said as much. But despite the commitment on paper, the Clippers already tried to move Griffin back in 2016, after he punched a team equipment manager and then proposed an exchange to the Timberwolves during this season for Karl-Anthony Towns.
As ESPN writer Zach Lowe explained in his latest column, the Clippers re-signed Blake Griffin with a very particular pitch: the first player in the history of the team with his jersey retired at the end of his career. They created a scene of his jersey retirement during their meeting with Griffin, going through his life and culminating with his jersey going up in the rafters. Six months later, they traded him to the Detroit Pistons in an attempt to reshape the roster on the fly while also setting up more cap flexibility this summer and beyond. No loyalty to be seen.
Just one week before he was traded to the Pistons, Blake Griffin reportedly turned down a photo request from a fan and screamed ‘Nine f*cking years’ as he was headed back to the locker room.
Asked Blake Griffin for a pic and he ran to the locker room yelling “9 fucking years!” Like he’s pissed off at something. The team? The fans? Himself?
— Ricky Chu (@RikDaddy) January 23, 2018
It’s not entirely clear if Griffin was already informed of the trade talks at that time but reports have surfaced saying this deal had been in the works for about a week. Plus, the fact he mentioned how long he has been with the franchise gives, at least, the suspect that he already knew something about the trade rumors. Again, where was the loyalty in all this situation? The straightforward answer: there wasn’t any of it. The Clippers made a decision that they thought was the best for their long-term future and traded away their best player for more flexibility going on. They made a business decision, just like many players do during their free agency. Why should we judge these two actions any differently?
I don’t see any difference in Kevin Durant deciding to leave the Oklahoma City Thunder to sig with the Warriors and the Clippers trading away Blake Griffin after promising he would be a Clipper for life. What’s the difference? There’s none on the surface. The NBA isn’t about loyalty; the NBA is about business. Everybody knows that. That’s why everyone should stop pretending that loyalty is still a thing in the NBA. It’s 2018, the 70’s and 80’s are long gone and talking about these things makes no sense at all.
What LeBron James said immediately after Griffin was moved to the Pistons should be printed and shared:
‘When a player gets traded, management was doing what’s best for the franchise, but when a player decides, he’s not loyal, he’s a snake, he’s not committed. That’s the narrative of how it goes’
This kind of narrative is really sad. That’s why I always respected players like LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Durant, who decided to make ‘unpopular’ decisions because they thought of what was the best move for them. LeBron left Cleveland because he felt that winning there was almost impossible for him, so he went to Miami where he played in four straght NBA finals and won two NBA titles, then he went back to Cleveland when he felt was the best time to come back and won another NBA title while heading to three more NBA Finals. He came back to a team whose owner wrote a letter against him when he left the first time. And we’re still here talking about loyalty? For real? All the loyalty shown in the league is fake, it’s just a poster put in front of media and fans to cover the fact that this league is all about business like it should be.
When I was a little kid, I remember that I cried so much when the Sixers traded Allen Iverson to the Denver Nuggets. I felt betrayed like the team was giving up a part of my life. Iverson was my personal hero. Growing up, I understood why the Sixers made that move, and, actually, I realized that they should have traded him at least a couple of years before when his trade value was higher. It wasn’t about loyalty, it wasn’t about passion or pride, it was about making the best move for the team (that trade brought to Philadelphia nothing less than the Professor aka Andre Miller, one of my favorite NBA players ever).
Both decisions by a team and a player should be evaluated only on how these decisions will impact their respective future, leaving the emotions aside. Because despite the fact that the league is made by human beings, this is mainly a business, for everyone involved, and when we’re talking about business decisions, there’s no space for feelings. In a business environment that surrounds all the professional sports in the USA and beyond, when you’re driven by sensitivity, you’re probably going to take a bad decision.
Remember when the Lakers signed Kobe Bryant to a two-year extension, worth around $50 million, back in 2013? The team gave that contract to Bryant based mostly on the loyalty to the player, because Bryant was one of the best, if not the best, players in Lakers’ history. But at that time, Kobe wasn’t the same player he used to be and the Lakers went nowhere during those two final seasons. The team overpaid for him. Why? Because they took a decision based on the emotional link between the player and the organization and not on his current evaluation. An older Bryant coming off some major injuries was not worth the near $50 million deal.
The Blake Griffin trade shows how stupid and silly is to talk about loyalty and the thought of ‘forever’ in the league. Because the NBA, again, is a business and you simply don’t do business with feelings. So, please, let’s just leave loyalty and all that stuff out of the door. Everyone in the NBA is a professional and knows how to deal with trades, being cut and everything in between. It’s the life they choose and they know that loyalty and everything in between are not going to be priorities in their careers.
