Blake Griffin’s game days with the Detroit Pistons are over. On Friday, the six-time All-Star agreed to a purchase contract with the Pistons, the team announced. Griffin, 31, will now be an unrestricted free agent and will be able to sign with any team. Several top contenders are interested in adding Griffin to the tiebreaker, but the Nets are favorites to hire him, by The Athletic’s Shams Charania.
The first general choice has not served the Pistons since February 12, as both sides agreed that he would remain out of the lineup until the team facilitated an exchange for him or they agreed to a purchase. The Pistons are in the middle of a rebuild, while Griffin wants to have the opportunity to compete for a championship at this point in his career. “I am grateful to Pistons for understanding what I want to accomplish in my career and for working together on the best path forward,” Griffin said in a statement last month.
Despite trying, the Pistons ended up failing to find a business partner for Griffin due to the size of his contract, which included a player option worth almost $ 39 million for the next season before the purchase. As part of his purchase agreement, Griffin agreed to return $ 13.3 million in salary, for Charania.
At this point in his career, Griffin is clearly not the player he was before. Griffin was once a high-flying athlete, but injury problems took their toll. Now he has largely been relegated to the role of spacer, as more than half of his attempts at a field goal per game this season came from outside the arc. He averages 12.3 points per game, the lowest level of his career, while shooting just 36 percent off the ground in the season, and he also gets just 5.2 rebounds per performance.
The Pistons were unable to find a team willing to take over the rest of Griffin’s contract, but now that he is going to the free agency, Griffin will have several suitors. Brooklyn Nets, Miami Heat, Golden State Warriors, Boston Celtics, Los Angeles Clippers and Los Angeles Lakers are among the teams that have already expressed interest in Griffin, according to Marc Stein of The New York Times.
Griffin was traded to Detroit from the Los Angeles Clippers in January 2018 and he made the All-Star team as a member of the Pistons during the 2018-19 season. However, injury problems have kept him with only 38 games in total in the past two seasons. Although he is not the 20-point, 10-rebound player he once was, Griffin can still be productive for stretches and can provide a good bench boost for an opposing team.