The John Wooden Award will celebrate its 50th anniversary this season. Ahead of the awards ceremony on April 10, 2026, The Sports Tribune, in partnership with the Wooden Awards and the Los Angeles Athletic Club, will highlight past recipients of the Wooden Awards and Legendary Coaching Awards.
It’s usually a process for a player to gain notoriety in the NBA, but every once in a while someone arrives at notoriety like they’ve been shot out of a cannon. The ambitious Blake Griffin is one such player.
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Blake Austin Griffin was born on March 16, 1989, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He and his older brother, Tyler, were homeschooled until Tyler was in tenth grade and Blake was in eighth grade.
Griffin also played baseball and football before deciding to focus solely on basketball, but in 2003 he followed his brother to Oklahoma Christian School, where they played basketball under their father, head coach Tommy Griffin. They played together in the 2003-04 and 2004-05 seasons and won two state basketball championships in the process. In his final season at Taylor High School, he was selected to the All-State team, and Taylor accepted a scholarship to play for his hometown team in Oklahoma.
In Griffin’s junior year, he led the Saints to a 27-1 record and their third consecutive state championship, while earning the Oklahoma State (Newspaper) Player of the Year award.
At this point, Griffin was seriously considering teams like Duke, Kansas State, North Carolina and Texas, but his brother convinced him to join the Sooners as well.
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Griffin committed to Oklahoma State before his senior year, where he averaged 26.8 points, 15.1 rebounds, 4.9 assists and 2.9 blocks per game, leading the Saints to their fourth consecutive state championship.
He was selected to the Oklahoma boys’ first team all-state and third team March All-America. In addition, he was Oklahoma State’s Gatorade Player of the Year and a McDonald’s and Jordan Brand All-American.
“My dad had a huge impact on my basketball life on and off the court. Playing for him, having him around and having him push me harder than any other coach would have been a huge blessing to me,” Griffin said of his basketball career. “Playing with my brother at the University of Oklahoma was an unreal experience. It was the most fun time I’ve ever had in my basketball career and I will cherish these memories forever.”
Griffin is one of the most decorated recruits the Sooners have ever drafted, with the powerful 6-foot-9 forward being named first-team all-district by the Basketball Writers Association of America and the National Basketball Coaches Association as a freshman, as well as being named to the All-Big 12 Conference first team. Originally expected to be a lottery pick in the 2008 NBA Draft, he returned to Oklahoma State to try to help the Sooners win a national championship.
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During Griffin’s sophomore season, Oklahoma got off to a 12-0 start before finishing second in the conference with a 13-3 record and losing to North Carolina in the NCAA Tournament South Regional final.
He averaged 22.7 points, 14.4 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game during the regular season, earning first-team All-American honors while leading the nation in rebounds.
Griffin captured all six national player of the year honors, including the James Naismith College Player of the Year Award and the coveted John R. Wooden Award for college basketball’s top player. He was eventually selected by the Los Angeles Clippers with the first overall pick in the 2009 NBA Draft.
Griffin played for Los Angeles during the NBA Summer League and was named the league MVP. But he injured his left knee in the Clippers’ final preseason game, and just before the start of the 2009-10 season, news broke that he had a stress fracture, delaying his NBA debut by several weeks. Later tests showed that the knee was not recovering as hoped, and he underwent surgery in January 2010, causing him to miss the remainder of his first season.
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Due to the length of his injury, Griffin was still considered a rookie at the start of the 2010-11 season and set a franchise record for the most consecutive double-doubles with 27.
That season, he was selected to the 2011 NBA All-Star Game. An outstanding athlete known for his dunks, he won the Slam Dunk Contest during All-Star Weekend and then led all rookies in points, rebounds and double-doubles that year, earning Rookie of the Year honors.
Unfortunately, injuries hampered Griffin’s career for the next few years. In January 2018, he was traded to the Detroit Pistons, where he will play until 2021. He then signed with the Brooklyn Nets, and finally, in September 2022, after 14 NBA seasons, he signed with the Boston Celtics, where he played until April 2024, when he announced his retirement.
He finished his career as a six-time NBA All-Star (2011-2015, 2019), a three-time All-NBA Second Team selection (2012-2014), and a two-time All-NBA Third Team selection (2015, 2019).
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Since retiring, Griffin has kept busy as an NBA analyst on Prime, FanDuel ambassador, producer, coach and mentor.
“Sometimes you get lucky—you don’t have to work too hard and you succeed anyway,” he once said. “But over time, if you really want to shape your own path, I think it comes down to the quality of the time you put in.”
