We don’t see Blake Griffin on every single commercial during national NBA game telecasts anymore, but we all have used Kias in our driveways to show that certain ad campaigns actually worked.
Relevancy has escaped Griffin over the past couple of seasons, what with the injuries, the dropoff by his old team — the Los Angeles Clippers — and the struggles late last season with his new team — the Detroit Pistons.
That is now changing.
Blake came back in a big way for one of the surprise teams of the current NBA season, scoring 50 points and converting the go-ahead three-point play late in overtime as Detroit defeated Philadelphia 133-132 to move to 3-0 Tuesday night.
This came despite the questionable ejection of Andre Drummond early in overtime when Joel Embiid sold a call to the referees, prompting Embiid to remark afterward that “I own a lot of real estate in his head.”
The next game between those two teams is Nov. 3 in Philadelphia, and the Pistons will find themselves tested twice by the Boston Celtics in the interim. But for now, Griffin is the league’s leading scorer at 36.3 ppg.
And the fans at Little Caesars Arena in Downtown Detroit were breaking out chants of “M-V-P” last night.
Griffin was such an afterthought that he was not even in the MVP discussion during the preseason, making him currently a 5-1 “Field” bet that is worth waiting out.
Odds on BetDSI.com and other Sportsbooks change regularly, as evidenced by the Pistons dropping from 250-1 to win the NBA title two days ago to 100-1 today.
The MVP debate was being dominated by Nikola Jokic one day earlier, but these things tend to be rather whimsical over the first month of the season until we all see what type of a body of work each of the legit contenders string together.
Click on the screenshot below to place a wager on any of these players.
PODCAST: TALKING ALL THINGS PISTONS WITH P.A. ANNOUNCER JOHN MASON
The Pistons were not the subject of much offseason chatter except when it came to coaching and front office moves. Duane Casey replaced Stan Van Gundy, Ed Stefanski cleaned out the front office and the roster stayed more or less intact.
But what Casey has done that Van Gundy did not is start playing Griffin as a point forward, similar to what LeBron James has been doing for the Cavs and Heat over the course of his career. Against the 76ers, Dario Saric and Joel Embiid repeatedly sagged off him, and Griffin went 5-for-10 from 3-point range and 20-for-35 overall.
The icing on the cake was the three-point play with less than 2 seconds left that gave the Pistons what could be a signature steppingstone victory.
“The past two or three years, all I hear about is how bad I am,” Griffin said. “It’s a big win, but we’ve got to move on. This is game three and now we’ve got to move on to game four.” The Pistons are 3-0 for the first time since 2015-16, the last time they made the playoffs.
Two days ago, those odds were 250-1.
Odds are, the Pistons will lose sometime soon and Griffin will sustain an injury. The first is a certainty.
The second?
Only time will tell. Griffin is now in his 10th NBA season and has played 82 games only once, back when he was a rookie in 2010-11. He missed 24, 21 and 27 games in the past three NBA seasons.
But if history fails to repeat itself, those “M-V-P” chants that were all the rage in The D on Tuesday night are going to be heard a lot more — probably on Friday night against the Boston Celtics.
If it keeps up, we’ll all be buying Kias again.
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