Six-time All-Star power forward Blake Griffin announced his retirement from the NBA on Wednesday. Griffin, who is best known for his time with the Los Angeles Clippers, walks away from professional basketball after 13 years in the league.
Griffin last played in 2022–23, when he appeared in 41 games with the Boston Celtics and averaged a career-low 4.1 points and 3.8 rebounds. He remained unsigned throughout the 2023-24 season.
The former first overall pick in the 2009 NBA Draft made his retirement announcement via a statement shared on social media.
“I never envisioned myself as the guy who would have a ‘letter to basketball’ retirement announcement … and I’m still not going to be that guy. But as I reflected on my career, the one feeling I kept coming back to and the one thing I wanted to express was thankfulness,“ Griffin wrote in the statement. “The game of basketball has given me so much in this life, and I wouldn’t change a thing.”
After sitting out his rookie season due to a knee injury, Blake Griffin made his NBA debut in the 2010-11 NBA season and immediately took the league by storm. He won the Rookie of the Year honors, was named an All-Star, and won the Slam Dunk Contest in his first year as a pro. Griffin would follow that by being an All-Star in each of the next four seasons while also finishing third in MVP voting in the 2013-14 season.
After this dominant five-year stretch, injuries derailed Griffin’s career and caused the Clippers to trade him to the Detroit Pistons midway through the 2017-18 season. Griffin briefly returned to All-Star form in 2018–19 before the injuries got the better of him once again. He was released by the Pistons during the 2020–21 season and played one-and-a-half seasons with the Brooklyn Nets before a stint with the Celtics.
Griffin retires with NBA career averages of 19.0 points, 8.0 rebounds, and 4.0 assists per game.
