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A new and good world: the metamorphosis that Blake Griffin will have to go through in Brooklyn - Walla! sport

2021-03-12T18:10:53.991Z


Blake Griffin is far from being the exciting star of the past, but when you look at the current versions of Dwight Howard and Carmelo Anthony, you realize what he can contribute to the Brooklyn championship fight. Ravitz on the intriguing addition to the ambitious project, and on the actor who became Steve Nash's personal brilliance


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A new and good world: the metamorphosis that Blake Griffin will have to go through in Brooklyn

Blake Griffin is far from being the exciting star of the past, but when you look at the current versions of Dwight Howard and Carmelo Anthony, you realize what he can contribute to the Brooklyn championship fight.

Ravitz on the intriguing addition to the ambitious project, and on the actor who became Steve Nash's personal brilliance

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  • Blake Griffin

  • Brooklyn Nets

Assaf Ravitz

Friday, 12 March 2021, 20:00 Updated: 20:07

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On other days, it was a four-star lineup.

Griffin and the New Friends (Photo: Screenshot, from ESPN Twitter)

Brooklyn continues to be the most intriguing team in the NBA.

Once James Harden joined and formed a rare trio of stars, some significant question marks arose around the chances of success of the ambitious project.

The three main question marks, in a word or two: chemistry, defense and a helpful staff.

One question has already been resolved: the chemistry between the stars looks great, they enjoy playing together, everyone has found their role and it looks like a historic attacking team.

One question remains open: in defense there are sparks of connection, but most of the time there is not enough coordination and quality for the defense of a large team.



The third question has been at the center of recent weeks.

A team like Brooklyn does not need more than 7-8 rotation players, and if until a few weeks ago it was possible to talk about a disadvantage of two players, it could be that the Nets found the two missing squads.

One player with a senior name came after being released from his team and preferred to sign for the championship candidate.

The second player has been on Steve Nash's squad since the start of the season, but has recently reinvented himself in a way that has made him a favorite of commentators.

We will look at each one individually and then in a group with them.

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Kyrie Irving sniped 40 points in the win over Boston, triple-double to Antocompo against the Knicks

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Will he follow in the footsteps of Carmelo Anthony and Dwight Howard?

Griffin at Brooklyn's game tonight (Photo: GettyImages, Al Bello)

Blake Griffin

Kyrie Irving, James Harden, Kevin Durant, Blake Griffin.

At first glance, this is an All-Star team, not a team in the league.

But Blake who comes to Brooklyn is not Blake from his All-Star days, after a career saturated with his bodily injuries struggling to endure at 32. For the past two years he has looked like a shadow of himself, was one of the least effective players in the league, scoring 35.2 percent from the field last season and 36.5 percent from the field this year.

If Griffin is not the scorer he used to be, what is he?

This is the question he and Steve Nash will have to answer.



Blake has already undergone one metamorphosis in his career.

In the Detroit version, including the successful one, the one selected for the third five of the season in 2019, he was no longer the super athlete who comes to the ring whenever he feels like it and focuses on being the pick n 'roll and post game blocker as he was most years at the Clippers.

In Detroit Blake was an outside player for everything: leading a ball, directing a game, starting moves from the three-point line, rising to a great many shots from outside the box, including threes.

Is he able to reinvent himself again?

There is reason for optimism.

The history of the league is full of great players who have taken on secondary roles towards the end of their careers, including Dwight Howard and Carmelo Anthony who are doing it successfully today.



But it is Dwight and Melo who are also signaling the warning.

Both required a long process that included several very disappointing years until they learned to feel comfortable in a secondary role.

Griffin will have to skip the acclimatization period in the new class to contribute anything to Brooklyn's championship efforts.

He probably does not save well enough to contribute thanks to his defense.

He will struggle for minutes with Jeff Green, who feels very comfortable in the high position who scores from the outside, performs the right simple actions and deals with outside players in substitutions on defense.

Blake will have to prove to Nash that he is capable of contributing more than Green to be on the floor in important games.



The potential exists, especially if it combines capabilities from its two periods.

In Brooklyn he will be able to return to the blocking role in Pick N 'Roll, he no longer finishes in color as he once did but the Nets' spacing will allow him to express his talent and creativity as an intruder.

At the same time, he will help gain space thanks to the outside shooting he developed in Detroit.

While shooting from a dribble has collapsed in the past two years, he is still scoring catches and catches in catch and shot in Detroit this season at an acceptable 34.6 percent.

The most encouraging statistic is that Blake scored completely free throws this year at 44.2 percent.

In Brooklyn he will be able to get a great many completely free threes, because in many fives he will be the least threatening player from outside, the one from whom the help is brought.

The delivery ability will allow him not only to finish but also to move the attack.

It combines the abilities of an ideal offensive complementary player.



To realize this potential Blake will have to dedicate himself to the role, which mostly means giving up trying to create shot situations himself, which in Detroit he continued to do even when the shots stopped coming in.

In a group with three much more effective creators than him, there is no reason for him to try to initiate on his own.

Another obstacle on Blake's success in Brooklyn is his defense.

There is no room for another weak squad in defense, and if Griffin is unable to deal with players of various types he will have a hard time staying on the floor.

Fewer minutes and less offensive yoke might allow him to invest more in defense.

He has improved his team defense over the years and is Brooklyn's most massive inside player.

You can imagine him keeping someone like Joel Ambide better than the other options Nash has, but for now that ability only exists in the imagination.

More on Walla!

LeBron Disappointed: After signing Blake Griffin, Brooklyn became the championship to win the championship

To the full article

The surprising weapon.

Bruce Brown (Photo: GettyImages, Sarah Stier)

Bruce Brown

Kevin Durant's long absence (which may be the most important question mark) allows sub-players to get significant minutes and try to prove to Nash that they have a place in the rotation.

Young Nick Claxton has earned minutes as an energetic replacement chin, but is probably not yet ripe for a significant real-time role.

Landry Shamet resets the handle and that could make him an important player.

But the big winner of the period is Bruce Brown, a third-year player who came from Detroit in the summer in a trade that did not arouse too much interest.



Brown has become in recent weeks a phenomenon that can not be ignored: a player 1.93 m tall, with a body type of guard, who functions as an offensive chin for everything.

His main job on offense is to block one of the ball carriers and cut into a ring and he does so with an efficiency that should not happen in his size.

He has a sense of finish in color, he is one of those players whose shots from close range are somehow always sucked in.

The rivals do not know how to digest it.

He is usually entrusted with the opponent's least good guard, a short player who is not used to keeping the blocker in pick n roll and is unable to provide ring protection in this role.

Spare will leave Kyrie or Harden a weak guard, an attempt to fight a blocking gives the scorers an initial advantage that defensive tools have no downside.

Brown knows how to recognize the moment when the defensive players are debating a substitution to escape freely inside, his agility does not leave much chance for the players who come to help, and if they do he knows how to deliver to the shots that are available.



When he is not blocking, Brown often moves without a ball to the ring the moment his guard looks at the ball.

He has managed to develop coordination with Harden and knows that the bearded man is able to identify a player who moves freely to the color even in the last fraction of a second of penetration or ascension to shooting, when the defensive players are already confident that he will throw.

Brown's ability to dodge unsaved and agile guards will make it difficult for the required move of trying to keep him with inside players.

He also scores threes from the corner and has a sense for momentum threes.

Defensively he keeps good guards and wingers, although the size makes it difficult for him to handle the bigger forwards.

He does the little things that are required of a complementary player of his kind: sneaks up on an offensive rebound, fights for every ball around him, makes good decisions on both sides.

It could be that Brooklyn has earned a significant rotation player for many years.



Brown took the spot in the top five that Durant cleared and in the six games before the All-Star break he scored 18 points per game on 67.7 percent from the field and added 6 rebounds and 3 assists.

He did it even though he played most of his minutes alongside Diandra Jordan, which was supposed to make it hard for him to get to the color.

When KD returns, Brown will probably go down to the bench, but is expected to continue to get a lot of minutes and most of them will be surrounded by four outside shots.

Makes his players think outside the box.

Steve Nash (Photo: GettyImages, Jim McIsaac)

Brooklyn faculty

The Brown phenomenon is very encouraging not only because it provides Brooklyn with a quality rotation player, but also because of what it tells about Steve Nash.

The ability to take a player about his height and turn him into a kind of chin, because that's the right way to use him, is the kind of flashes that Sean Marx fantasized about when he signed Nash.

The former coordinator understands players and knows how to think outside the box to get the most out of them.

And if that's what he was able to bring out a player with very specific abilities like Brown, it would be very intriguing to see how he would use a diverse offensive player like Blake Griffin.



Nash seems to understand what Mike D'Antoni, his former coach and assistant today, has failed to understand over the years: the importance of flexibility in building a playoff squad.

Nash experiences different styles, high and low formations, various methods in defense, he develops a lot of sub-players that he can pull out at the right moment, in the right series, in the right match-up.

In attack there is a lot of movement of players and very few situations where the stars just play one on one, even though they can.

The defense is very much based on substitutions, which means everyone is supposed to keep different types of players.

It can be assumed that Marx will from now on focus on strengthening the staff with defense experts who fit the style.



In the end, all this flexibility is mostly for the fifth rib in the quintet.

The Three Stars and Joe Harris are safe stocks, and all that is left is to decide who plays alongside them.

But the diversity of the possible fifth sides makes Brooklyn a very different team as each one plays.

Diandra Jordan is the classic chin that waits in color and makes the Nets a relatively normal team;

Jeff Green is the inside player who scores threes and allows automatic substitutions on five positions on defense;

Bruce Brown will produce the most intriguing low lineup in the league this year, with an outside player providing the in-depth movement of the inside players;

Landry Shamett will produce the top five scariest three-pointers in league history;

Blake Griffin is the secret card, which if connected will add more creativity, shooting and delivery ability to a quintet that is already loaded with all of these, along with rebounds and the ability to put a body on physical players on defense.

Nash has enough options even without Blake, but with him new heights can be reached.

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Source: walla

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