BLAKE GRIFFIN is hearing voices. At least he's trying to. As a
December wind howls outside, the sophomore power forward sits in a
folding chair at the edge of Oklahoma's practice floor, squinting in
concentration, trying to conjure villainy. After a moment, his voice
changes from his usual low conversational murmur, and he is suddenly
the Joker in the movie The Dark Knight. "Do you want to know
how I got my scars?" he asks menacingly. "My father was a drinker, and
a fiend." You can practically see the smeared red-and-white clown
makeup on the late Heath Ledger's face, and the knife glinting in his
hand.
The next moment it's summer in Beijing, and as
Griffin does Michael Phelps marveling over his new-found popularity—"I
got on Facebook and I had, like, 4,000 friend requests and I was like,
Wow, that's really crazy!"—you could swear you had just caught a whiff
of chlorine.
Griffin's repertoire includes his teammates
and coaches too. When he's not borrowing their voices, he's borrowing
their stuff. He delights in relocating the contents of a locker and
then sitting back to see how long it takes his victim to notice. "One
day I saw him wearing this hat and I said, 'Hey, I have a hat just like
that!'" recalls freshman guard Willie Warren. "Of course, it was my hat
he was wearing."
Griffin's older brother, Taylor, a senior forward for the Sooners, says two words sum up his sibling: aggressive and goofy.
It's not a combination seen at the top of the NBA draft board very
often, but it's likely to be this June, because Griffin, a 6'10",
250-pound banger, can do impressions of well-known people on the court
too. One Eastern Conference scout, who calls Griffin "the best player
in the draft," says that he has "the quickness of Amaré Stoudemire and
the strength of Carlos Boozer."
From SI. Read more here.
