A.J. Griffin, the No. 16 overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft by the Atlanta Hawks is considering stepping away from basketball, according to The Athletic’s Shams Charania. Griffin was traded to the Houston Rockets this offseason in a deal that sent No. 43 overall pick Nikola Durisic to the Hawks. According to Charania, both Griffin and the Rockets are preparing for his departure from the game.
Griffin, the son of former Milwaukee Bucks head coach Adrian Griffin, was a standout high school prospect. He was ranked as the No. 12 prospect in his class by 247Sports and attended Duke for a single season. He averaged 10.4 points per game as Duke made a run to the Final Four before losing to North Carolina. He entered the NBA Draft from there and landed in Atlanta.
His rookie season with the Hawks was promising. He averaged 8.9 points per game and started 12 times. He scored a career-high 24 points twice in his first two months in the NBA, and all six of the games in which he scored 17 points or more came in November or December of 2022. His performance declined from there, though, and he only played 20 games in his second season. In Houston, he would have faced an uphill battle to earn minutes on a very crowded young roster.
It is unclear how long Griffin plans to stay away from the sport. There isn’t much precedent in the NBA for a young player taking an extended absence not related to an injury and eventually returning to a productive career, but to this point, there has not been reporting on whether the parties involved are treating this as a temporary absence or a permanent retirement. For the time being, at least, it looks as though Griffin is going to step away from the sport for the foreseeable future.
