About Blake Griffin, by Paul Shirley.

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Indisputably, one of the highlights of this season in the NBA has been the emergence of 

Blake Griffin, the player of the Los Angeles  Clippers, whose acrobatic dunks and youthful 

exuberance have exorcised the ghosts of a rookie season ruined by injury. There is the 

impression that Griffin is looking at a medium term full of All-Star appearances and 

advertising contracts. But a shadow has loomed over Griffin´s potential stardom: Blake 

Griffin may well be a jerk. 

Being a jerk is a temptation many NBA stars can´t resist. They think they can do everything on 

their own, they do not need teammates. They forget the lessons life teaches us. Lessons as 

those ones we have learnt in nightclubs. 

A few days ago in Melbourne, thanks to my Australian host´s influence among the locals,  I 

was allowed to go into a swanky nightclub whose name I forget because of the excess of 

Australian beers that I drank in the afore mentioned nightclub. Inside the room, I had much time 

to reflect on the dynamics of the interaction between man / woman late at night, especially 

because of my condition as a man who has a girlfriend, as opposed to those seeking 

partners. I looked at a group of three boys, who I casually decided to call Blake, Eric and 

DeAndre, and I imagined two possible scenarios for them during the night: 

Blake, Eric and DeAndre go into a nightclub called Staples. Blake is attractive, gracious and, most 

important for our example, the alpha male of this group. It's a nice guy: he listen to the girls, buy them drinks and

ask them questions about their lives. As the girls like to be with Blake, they like being with the group and, when

night comes to an end, girls are circling around the three friends like bees in a garden in spring. 

Blake returns home with the trophy, one of the prettiest girls in the nightclub, whose name 

happens to be the Most Valuable, but Eric and DeAndre defend themselves well and take 

the home telephone numbers of the sixth and ninth prettiest girl in the club. If the word 

that means "happy" were instead "championship", the group had won a championship and 

Blake would have been the main reason they would have won that championship. DeAndre 

and Eric decide to keep coming back to the Staples with Blake,  knowing that gives them the 

best chance of winning more championships. 

Now imagine another scenario and another Blake. This Blake is a jerk because he doesn´t 

pay attention to these girls he doesn´t like, and decides to talk only with the prettiest girl.

The other girls in the nightclub take notice that Blake is not very friendly, so they fly 

away from him and his friends. Blake is rude to waiters, it appears that in this night club 

these are called referees, and he has no patience with a gorilla who wants to share a laugh 

about a client who can´t still stand. 

At the end of the night, Blake is doing better than Eric and DeAndre (alpha males always do), 

but not as well as Magnanimous Blake would have done, and he is taking home  twelfth 

most attractive girl´s phone number, named Third NBA Best Team, an odd name, I know. 

Disgusted, Eric is leaving early because he prefers playing with his dog, Orlando Magic, and 

DeAndre goes to the home of his friend, Phoenix Suns. 

No one wins the championship and no one is as good as should have been. And 

all because Blake was a jerk.