There was an awful lot going wrong with the Brooklyn Nets in what was a tumultuous 2021-22 season for the franchise. They had to deal with Kyrie Irving refusing to get vaccinated, which meant he couldn’t play home games and the drama surrounding Irving’s situation led to James Harden wanting out.
Harden would eventually get his wish as they traded him to the 76ers, and the Nets got a package headlined by Ben Simmons in return, but the Australian wouldn’t play a minute for them as he was dealing with injuries as well as some mental health issues. Kevin Durant wasn’t too happy with the way things were going down, and it’s not a surprise when you consider all of this that the season ended up being a failure. While all this was going on, there was also the curious case of Blake Griffin who was seemingly being pushed out of the rotation, and we might finally know just why that was the case.
NBA Insider Reveals Why Blake Griffin Didn’t Play More Minutes For The Nets
The Nets were an undersized team, so when Griffin saw his minutes diminish and then get removed from the rotation entirely for much of the second half of the season, many wondered why coach Steve Nash didn’t want to play him. NBA insider Kristian Winfield was recently on “The Athletic NBA Show” where he was asked why the Nets aren’t resigning Griffin, and he stated that Nash doesn’t see Griffin as someone who is deserving of minutes on the court.
via The Athletic NBA Show (starts at 27:10 mark):
“There’s something about Blake Griffin that Steve Nash doesn’t like. I’ll just say that. Maybe not like, but doesn’t feel 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 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 hustled, grabbing rebounds, making the right passes, he did those things well, but for Steve it boiled down to, he just couldn’t hit an open shot, and that was a liability so that was it. I think that’s probably why they didn’t sign him because why sign him if you aren’t going to play him?”
Those shooting struggles do perhaps explain why Griffin was phased out of the rotation, and he ended up shooting just 26.2% from beyond the arc last season. Well, if that were an issue last season, it would be a bigger one this time around, considering Ben Simmons needs shooters around him more than anything else.
The Nets also signed Markieff Morris as another big body who sort of fits the role that they had envisioned for Blake last season, so it is hard to see him going back there. Griffin is one of quite a few big names who remain unsigned at this point, and it will be interesting to see how his situation develops moving forward.
