Blake Griffin looking to improve his shooting ahead of next season – NBA News
Los Angeles Clippers struck gold when they picked Blake Griffin with their first draft pick back in 2009. Griffin has already been named the rookie of the year and the slam dunk champion, in his short career in NBA so far.
He is one of those players who can turn around franchises. He is an exceptional athlete, with amazing dunking abilities that land him on ESPN almost every other day. The Clippers are looking at Griffin as the future of the franchise
and are all set to offer him a contract extension that will see him making big dollars.
However, the Clips as well as Griffin know that his game is too one dimensional at the moment to be a successful player in the NBA.
Griffin had a good season last year, but much of it was because he had Chris Paul to set up plays for him. It would be fair to say that Griffin did not have to make too much of an effort in making plays or looking for shots. Rather,
he was handed the ball while being in good positions to score. And a great deal of his points come from alley oops or dunks inside the paint.
Blake knows that a one dimensional game like that can be easily controlled, like the San Antonio Spurs did in the Western Conference Semi Finals last year on their way to a 4-0 sweep of the Clippers.
Griffin is not a great shooter and he knows it. He took 3.9 shots per game from 16 feet or more last year, and scored on 37% of those. Plus, for a person who gets into foul trouble a lot, the power forward does not have the most
consistent of free throw shooting.
For the sake of his team and his own future, Griffin needs to improve his shooting, so that he can spread the defence and score from multiple positions. For that very reason, he hired a shooting coach to help him with his jump
shot and was training with him everyday till he injured his knee during training camp for the U.S Olympic team in Las Vegas.
Griffin was on the Champs podcast recently and said:
I hired a shooting coach. I work with him every single day. Yea (his old shooting form was) kind of a fade away or a push-arm shot. Or bring it behind my head — slightly. But now I’ve just kind of streamlined it. But I’ve still
got a lot of work to do. You struggle with it because when you relearn all this stuff I guess you shoot terrible. You shoot worse than you ever have. Then you turn a corner when it all kind of clicks together.”
The player is currently recovering from a left knee injury that had him sidelined from the U.S Olympic team that won gold medal in London last week. Anthony Davis was his replacement on the team. Griffin will now be focusing on
a full recovery before the start of training camp.
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