With so many flavors out there, Blake Griffin finds it funny that people are being salty.
The new Nets big man pushed back this week at the negative reaction to him and LaMarcus Aldridge both signing with Brooklyn after receiving contract buyouts from their previous teams.
“It’s kind of funny to me, because for the last couple years all I’ve heard is how bad I am,” Griffin said, per Brian Lewis of the New York Post. “You sign with this team and everybody’s like, “That’s not fair!” People say whatever they want. I don’t put a whole lot of value in other people’s opinions.
“I trust the people I trust. If I don’t go to you for advice, then I’m probably not going to take your criticism,” he added. “So I have that circle of people. I have that group of people that I trust, real basketball people. That’s who I listen to. I just think it’s funny, I guess you could say that it’s amusing. I can’t speak for LaMarcus, I don’t know what people have been saying about him. That’s how I felt when I came here. I was hearing how bad I was, and now people care for some reason.”
The Nets’ latest signings to complement their superstar-studded core of Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant, and James Harden generated major backlash. Cries of “the rich get richer” abounded, and many pointed to the moves as a prime example of the inequities that small-market teams face at the hands of juggernauts based in New York and Los Angeles.
It is true that Griffin and Aldridge are both having career-worst seasons or close to it. Both had also largely been written off before they signed with the Nets. But even if they are no longer the All-Stars that they once were, they will still be very valuable role players that Brooklyn essentially got for free. That is where the root of the criticism lies, not in the belief that Griffin and Aldridge will somehow return to being 20-and-10 players for the Nets.
Regardless, Griffin seems to be basking in all of the hatred. After all, he did do this in his first game with the Nets.
