It’s a move no one really saw coming. When news broke that the Los Angeles Clippers had traded Blake Griffin Monday night, it caught a lot of people off guard. The team had just signed him to the largest extension in franchise history mere months before.
Now, Griffin is to resume his NBA career with a Detroit Pistons team he never would have taken a free agent visit with last summer.
For the Clippers, they clear some cap room long term in a potential chase for LeBron James following the season. They also added a few solid pieces to an injury-plagued roster.
According to this piece of information from ESPN’s Royce Young, the Clippers apparently called up everyone about trading Griffin. That included the Oklahoma City Thunder.
“I mean I know they made calls to Oklahoma City for Paul George,” Young said on The Hoop Collective podcast. “I’m pretty sure they made calls to Minnesota for players, so I mean, like, they tried to get some bigger name players. It just wasn’t happening.”
It’s not yet known what type of offer the Clippers made for Paul George, who is set to become a free agent following the season. Surely, they would have asked for more than George in a potential trade.
This spits in the face of the Clippers’ narrative that a trade was never really inevitable regarding Griffin until the Pistons came calling. If they were working a bunch of different avenues, the team was obviously actively shopping Griffin.