AJ Griffin: 2022 NBA Draft Scouting Report

Griffin has upside that could put him as a top-five guy in this class, but a ton of risk that makes us skeptical he will get there

Over two years ago, I was fortunate enough to go see AJ Griffin play when he was a junior in high school. His high school team, Archbishop Stepinac, was a New York City powerhouse. Malcolm Chimezie, not at Boston University, was a really good undersized big with an elite motor. RJ Davis, who started at point guard for North Carolina, was NY’s all-time leading scorer and an unbelievable player.

The highlight of the entire experience was AJ Griffin, standing out as a 16-year-old with a chiseled frame, bursty athleticism to throw down lobs and putbacks, and overpowering isolation ability. Despite being only about 6’5”, Griffin had the bounce and brawn to play much bigger, and the skill with the ball in his hands to create. He was a true mismatch nightmare.

Griffin wound up not having a senior season due to COVID, and lower body injuries robbed him of opportunities to play in other settings. How Griffin would look after that much time off and some severe ailments on his legs was the major factor coming into the season for the Blue Devils and what nearly every NBA scout was watching for.

Coach Krzyzewski at Duke eased Griffin into his college career. His minutes were curtailed early on, not exceeding 22 minutes in his first eleven contests. He was efficient in those short showings, posting 52-46-100 splits in only 13.1 minutes per game. His 3-pointer was on, a much-needed element for the Blue Devils.

Yet something didn’t look right with Griffin. His vertical pop to finish above the rim was missing. His creation off the bounce was limited, and his on-ball defense looked worse than ever before. Some legitimate concerns came to the surface, all while he was drilling a historic percentage of his triples and flashing the step-back self-creation scoring that made him so promising back in high school.

As the year went on, Griffin’s minutes and workload increased, but the output remained the same. He was an elite 3-point shooter, finishing the year going 44.7% from deep. He drilled step-backs and shots with a tough degree of difficulty and had the physical frame to see guys bounce off him in traffic.

He also rarely looked fully comfortable athletically on both ends. Productive nonetheless, Griffin enters the draft at a time where the onus is on scouts to figure out just how high of a swing he’s worth. If he can reclaim some of his athleticism and stay this consistent as a shooter, the combination of those athletic skills stand out as a top-six or seven talent in this class. Combine that with the fact he’s an 18-year-old (one of the youngest in this class) and basically didn’t have a senior year of high school competition due to COVID — and missed other key events due to injury — and the built-in excuses for why he’s so rough around the edges don’t scare people away.

There is the possibility he is permanently a below-the-rim scorer, a guy who has to deal with injuries from a young age due to an overdeveloped body from a young age. The shooting is not something we expect to stay north of 40% at the next level either, as it features a very unorthodox stance and is a set shot with no lift.

Griffin is one of the most difficult evaluations as a result of this wide array of outcomes. Writing a scouting report on him here is completely different than sitting in a front office of an NBA franchise where my livelihood is on the line and directly tied to the draft selections we make. If I try to put myself in that seat, I land on one simple conclusion: due to the volatility of his draft profile, we would stay away from drafting Griffin in the lottery and take a safer path for a more dependable prospect we can get a safe bet on.

We would let someone else take the risk on Griffin, even if we can see the appeal he has in the eyes of others. Big boards are simply reflections of what we would do if we were the general manager of a team, and we value swinging for singles more than home runs in general. This isn’t a slanderous hit piece; Griffin still cracks our top-25 of prospects, and there’s a point in this class that his upside does become worth the risk. It’s just lower for us than it might be for many others.

With all that said, let’s look closely at the challenging portions of the Griffin eval.