Blake Griffin really wants to be John Oliver
The former Clippers star has a new late-night show. He hopes it makes you see him — and the sport — in a whole new light.
The former Clippers star has a new late-night gig. He hopes it will make you see him - and the sport - in a whole new light.
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It looks like Blake Griffin made it.
The Oklahoma native, a six-time NBA All-Star with a matinee appearance, is a welcome studio gig for Amazon's NBA on Prime, and at age 37, he's likely to enjoy it all for many years to come.
So what makes someone like that go out and do something as kamikaze as the John Oliver of the sports world?
Next week when the first episode of <a href=” Joe <JSpacek@>, Griffin will pull off such a feat; Amyot, Stella, his new late-night show The Stepback with Blake Griffin debuts on Amazon and YouTube. Produced with Wondery, the show avoids the heightened analysis of a fake video game. No fanboys, no boyish heejin, jokes around, but only when it serves a political point, or a change from one.
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Instead, Griffin sits at his desk and, with the help of a behind-the-scenes team of researchers and writers, explains and opines for a full 24 minutes about a controversial topic. Sociological sports -- gambling in one, the impact of NIL money on college athletics in one second, the NFL and head injuries in another, ticket price hikes in one quarter. ("He doesn't ask insiders," he says in a new trailer.) The writers' room is filled with high-profile veterans who have worked with many of the greats, including Oliver's Greg Iwinsky, Seth Meyers' Allison Agosti and The Daily Show's Jason Ross.
In an episode seen by The Hollywood Reporter, Griffin pulls no punches as he goes after greedy owners of all sports who hold a city hostage until they get a taxpayer-funded stadium, then move the team if their demands aren't met. Owners of Oakland's former teams — the A's, Raiders and Warriors — are under fire.
People who know Griffin as a lovable, cheerful presence (the former Clipper has also performed stand-up shows at venues around the Los Angeles area, where he primarily lives) will be surprised to see him go so hard after the sport's sacred cows. And people who know sports podcasts will be surprised. For all the gas words that fill that particular balloon, few programs attempt to tackle the challenging issues of modern athletics, and those that are usually challenged by journalists like Pablo Torre, not former NBA kings.
With fourteen episodes already filmed and scheduled to air weekly over the coming months of the NBA season — and new episodes from the second season, hopefully later in 2027 — THR sat down with Griffin to ask about his transformation and his goal to change the world of sports talk ahead of his Tuesday debut.
"Sports' John Oliver" is a very ambitious goal. What made you try it?
I actually had this idea in 2016 and I was kind of sitting around updating the document and updating the document. This literally came from watching last week tonight. John Oliver could talk about heavier topics, but he also kept my attention because it was like, "This is a big deal, this is a joke," and it just helped my brain figure out what was going on. And over the years I've been telling friends about my idea of doing this for exercise, and a lot of people have been like, "There's really no such thing."
It's remarkable how, with all the content out there, a lot of it is just about games and characters, not business or systems.
exactly Most sports content does not explain the underlying aspects of the sport. They just react to music or performances and say this happened or that happened. And what we're going to do is - no pun intended - take a step back. To gather information and understand what's going on and how we got here and how we can move forward if it doesn't seem like the best path. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a tweet or a post, and it's even related to basketball or a team I was on, and I find myself saying, "That's not true." The more informed we are as fans, the better off we'll be.
Why do you think this is not tried more by others? Do they know something you don't?
I think sports back then had a lot of real journalists doing that kind of reporting. And of course there is still some of it. But it's less and less, and we've moved more towards whoever speaks loudest or first. And I think this is a mistake. People crave real and factual information and want to be well informed. This is why Pablo is so popular. You want to learn and you want to put yourself in the hands of someone you can trust.
You are distributed by Amazon which has NFL games, NBA games, WNBA games. Are you worried about being censored? This seems to be one of the reasons the networks won't be critical of the system – they're part of the money cascade too.
That was one of the reasons I wasn't interested in bringing this up and someone coming back to me with notes like, "We can't talk about baseball because we have baseball games," or whatever. I didn't want to jump through hoops. Fortunately, Wondery [owned by Amazon] gave me the platform to do exactly the show I wanted. We have a whole section on TV rights. We can say what we want.
I know you want to make dozens of episodes. Are there enough serious issues to fill this void? Part of why sports media seems so reprehensible is that there are so many hours to fill.
Oh, no, we have many topics. That way should not be new either; Can track and find more granularity. When we opened the writers' room and the research room, I was amazed at how much more there was to learn about these topics. You can just keep digging and keep digging. Like we did a NIL episode but didn't have time to touch on the transfer portal at all, which is what I want to do.
Just as a side note on this, I have to say, while my Labor side loves what's going on there, the fans hate it. We have killed a lot of competition. Cinderella is dead
I'm all for athletes getting paid, but there have to be parameters. For a while it felt lawless – like whichever school could raise the most money was the winner. This means that some schools or sports rise and others fall.
And it's not like we don't have parameters in professional sports. There is a salary cap and a maximum contract. There is an income distribution like the NFL.
I think we're going to start seeing more of that [in the NCAA]. The Senate just passed a bill with a cap and other protections that looks like a start.
When it comes to the salary cap, your old shop and the owner just faced some pretty serious fines for going around the shop [for Kawhi Leonard]. Was that fair to you?
It sounds like a very serious situation. I feel bad for the Clippers fans the most. These fans have a special place in my heart and for them to actually have a team and a potential title contender after all these years. It's happening now - it's really hard.
The emergence of huge sums of money in sports strikes many of our readers as the bottom line of many of our problems, whether it be relocation or gambling or many of our issues.
We have a gambling section that addresses this. And a youth sports episode - as big as it is now. We have a ticket section. It's all about how we can get the most money out of something. And it harms the sport.
I'm absolutely shocked at how usurious some of these prices are, whether it's the fees on the primary sites or the ways bad actors or bots drive up the prices on the secondary sites.
And some of the primary sites are owned by the same companies that own the secondary sites, which means they make twice the money and also really get to set the prices. We get through it all. I don't think I realized how messed up it really was until we got into it. That's why I admire the Premier League and football in Europe, where fans go on strike - riot - when prices are high. It shows that all this means nothing if we don't go to the games.
Is it your ultimate mission to empower fans?
Fans have a lot more power than they think. Like they all say, "It's all about the fans." But this is a true statement. You can still play the games without them, but the players or their owners wouldn't make that money without fans. So I think there's a way to not only slow things down [with ticket prices] but change the direction of the sport.
Do you wonder if there are a lot of viewers who don't want to understand the business because it ruins the magic - they just want to sit and watch a Saturday or Sunday game with a beer. They don't want the mask to be removed from us? What you're doing is admirable, but are there people who don't want that rigor in sports?
I'm sure there are people like that, but to be honest I think they're a minority. If you're going to invest a lot of time and money into a team and break hearts every week, or go on sports twitter or wherever, you want that level of understanding. You are almost like an investor. You care about learning more because you have so much tied up in it.