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Blake Griffin is Healthy and will Rearm the Los Angeles Clippers

With the amount of high-profile trades and signings that went down this summer, it’s easy to forget about Los Angeles Clippers power forward Blake Griffin. Drafted 1st overall last year, Griffin missed the entire 2009/10 season after breaking his kneecap in a preseason game on a nasty dunk show in the video below.

Since that dunk, ignorance of Griffin’s abilities and potential has become excusable. With only a handful of NBA exhibition games to draw from, you’d have to have watched him in college to understand what kind of player he is. At 6’10 and 251lbs, Griffin has that immediately apparent, special blend of freakish athleticism and power innate to only a handful of players; mainly Lebron James, Dwight Howard and Josh Smith. When combined with his work ethic and earnestness, Griffin has the potential to become a 21st century Karl  Malone; only taller, with more vicious jumping abilities and infinitely more style.

Since the injury, Griffin has been quiet; working on his knee, bulking up and waiting. Built like a grizzly bear who can run like a deer, Griffin is a 21 year-old kid Darwinized to dominate the NBA. And because he missed all of 2009/10, he’ll be listed as a rookie in 2010/11 making eligible for ROY. With Baron Davis as his underrated point guard; my guess is Griffin takes ROY over John Wall.

So while he might not be garnering respect just yet, in a month Griffin’s going to be all over highlight reels and the Clippers will be a mid tier force in what has become a weak western conference. You heard it here fist.

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Delonte West: Ladies Man

Although whatever happened between Delonte West and LeBron James’ mother remains a mystery; it’s become pretty obvious something happened. Unfortunately for Mr West, in the game of sleeping with professional athletes’ mothers, something is all it takes.

That something got a whole lot worse on Monday at the Boston Celtics media day when Delonte West gave his first interview since Terez Owens broke the story last May. With lawyers and PR teams nervously monitoring things, reporters were told to stick to NBA related topics like; how does it feel to be back with the Celtics? Or, who in Boston do you most look forward to playing with? And not questions like, what was it really like being with LeBron James’ 41 year-old mother? Or, has 6-8, 250lbs LeBron shoved you against a wall and asked you about all this yet?

Thankfully, some keen little journalist named Rich Shertenlieb from a radio station called 98.5 The Sports Hub had the gull to flat out ask Mr. West what everyone wanted to know, straight to the point, media rules be damned: ‘Did you have an intimate relationship with Gloria James, the mother of your former teammate LeBron James?’.

Some people are pretty effective at answering damning questions by being cryptically expressive. Republican Presidents are good at it, so are lawyers and advertising executives. Surprisingly, Delonte West isn’t. In what sounded like an attempt to swerve around the question (I’ve no idea why he didn’t just say ‘no’) West responded with the following “Not at all, I come from an era where you don’t say nothing bad about someone’s parent, so not at all’.

Syntax and grammar aside, it’s confusing and non-committal to say the least, and it makes just enough sense to be damning. PR people from all camps closed their eyes and shook their heads and the kind of commentary that only demands more explanation and commentary. Hopefully the flak he’s taking over it this week will teach Delonte West a lesson that should have been pretty obvious to begin with: An awkward and cryptic denial of a a sexual affair is pretty much like admitting you did it.

Monday’s brilliant media performance aside, this month’s signing with Boston was the highlight in an otherwise troubled year for West. The Cavaliers disappointing loss to the Celtics in this year’s playoffs was made much worse with speculation that it was a result of team morale being shredded on the eve of game 4 when LeBron first heard rumours involving his mother and his point guard(Cavs went on to lose games 4,5 and 6 and looked very out of sync). Last September, West was pulled over on for a traffic violation while riding on some sort of conspicuous 3-wheeled motorcycle. Officers found a 9mm Beretta pistol, .357 Magnum and a Remington 870 in a guitar case along with two enormous knives. As a result, this summer West pleaded guilty to weapons possession charges and was sentenced to state monitoring, unsupervised probation, 40 hours of community service, psychological counselling, and will be suspended for the first 10 games of the 2010-11 NBA season.

That being said, we love Delonte West and wish him the best of look with all this. He’s got a great game: athletic, a good jump shooter and a great defender. He has the potential to really make a difference for the Celtics, and will maybe get them as far as facing LeBron and the Heat in the playoffs. And we don’t give a damn whose mother he sleeps with, as long as it’s not ours.

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Lock Out 2K12?

The NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) expires in June of 2011. Like an extensive medical lump check, it has to be done every few years and has the potential to ruin everything. Because even though the NBA is on a role; basketball has become the second most popular sport on the planet, globalization is opening lucrative new markets and last year saw record breaking levels of revenue, there are significant problems at the ownership and revenue sharing level.

Under the 2005 CBA, players were guaranteed 57 percent of the league’s annual revenues, meaning money coming in before expenses. While far from Draconian, it’s been an albatross for the league as a whole. Bootlicking NBA Commissioner David Stern claims the contract has cost the league $200 million a year since 2005 and a whopping $370 million in 2009-10. The issue’s been compounded by the league’s less than balanced financial situation: Since 2008, 30-40% of NBA teams have been operating in the red, forcing Stern and his cronies to borrow $175 million in 2009 to reshuffle the books. Like every organization in the western world, the NBA has laden itself with too much debt.

Players never want a reduction in their salaries, but with teams unable to cover their expenses because of revenue cuts, it’s going to be pretty tough for them to explain why they shouldn’t. If the league and player’s union don’t reach an agreement by next year, we descend into a lockout and given the severity and significance of the dispute, a possible cancellation of the entire 2011-12 season.

Read more from Larry Coon at ESPN.com