There’s at least one sports journalist who felt Blake Griffin wasn’t worthy of the NBA Rookie of the Year award.
Marc Berman of the New York Post abstained from voting because he felt Griffin wasn’t a rookie, despite missing the entire 2009-10 regular season due to a knee injury.
“It was quite a mercurial season for Griffin, making the Clippers relevant again. It’s just too bad he didn’t do any of it as a rookie.
Advertisement“If someone doesn’t vote for Blake, they haven’t watched a lot of basketball,” Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro said recently.
Or maybe I saw too much basketball. Griffin, No. 1 pick of the 2009 Draft, had a depressing rookie campaign, one in which he still earned all of his $5,357,289 rookie wage. (He made his sophomore wage, $5,731,080, this season).
I watched him play in one game at the 2009 Las Vegas Summer League in July 2009. He competed in five summer-league games in 2009, averaged 19.2 points.
Griffin played seven preseason games for the Clippers in 2009-10 campaign, averaged 13.7 points and 8.1 rebounds. In that final preseason game, against New Orleans, Griffin got out on the fast break with Brooklyn’s Sebastian Telfair, who fed him the ball in the lane.
Griffin rose to the moon, jackhammered the ball through the net with his right hand and landed hard and badly. That would be the final game of his rookie season. He was later diagnosed with a broken kneecap that became amended to a stress fracture of his left patella.
Griffin’s rookie season was over in another cursed moment for the Clippers.
Congrats to Blake for a terrific comeback in his second NBA season. He would have gotten my vote for Most Improved Player.”
Add Berman to the list of sports reporters that should have their NBA voting privileges yanked, right behind the nine folks who left LeBron James off their MVP ballot.