re: Zion's bubble injury kept secret from team(coaches)?

Well, Jake actually talked to Christian Clark about the story, and it's possible that Christian and/or Jake know stuff about the situation that they couldn't verify and which makes everything much worse than what's reported. So, I don't rule out that Griff could be royally screwing everything up.

But the fact that Griff and Zion don't actually talk much, and the silliness of the piano thing (and we absolutely don't know the context of that), are not a big deal. Zion needs a relationship with his head coach, and it's good if develops relationships with his teammates and the assistant coaches. If Griffin and he don't relate well, then Trajan can talk with Zion when necessary. None of that is a problem as long as the relationship isn't toxic, and everything that we have heard says that this is not the case -- that Zion's problem with the organization is simply that they didn't put a winning team and coach around him last season.

Again, though, it's possible that Christian/Jake know stuff that they can't put into print or on the air. But based on what we actually know, whether Zion stays or goes is ultimately going to depend on Willie Green, Jaxson Hayes, NAW, Naji, Trey Murphy, BI, Jonas, Kira, etc.

In other words, if the players that we have drafted and traded for perform as we hope (and if Green is a good coach), then Zion is going to be here for many years, and the team will be a contender in a few years.

But if Trey Murphy turns into a bust, if NAW tears an achilles, if Jaxson gets into a fight with a teammate and breaks his jaw, and/or if Jonas and Graham simply suck the way that Bledsoe and Adams did, then David Griffin is going to get fired, and we stand a good chance of losing Zion.

But Zion was always going to leave if we didn't put a winning team around him. That's always been true.

So, Bronc, I don't think of myself as a Griff stan. He's struck out bigtime with SVG, Adams, Melli, and Bledsoe. We lost a great opportunity with Christian Wood. I thought some of those decisions made sense at the time, but GMs get judged by how those decisions work out.

On the other hand, some things have worked out very well. Getting BI in the AD trade worked very well, assembling quality assistants and support staff, etc. So far, it seems that we have drafted very well in Jaxson, NAW, Kira, and Murphy. I still see the potential for those players to become the kind of players that can turn the Pels into contenders, and of course, we still have picks to make another big trade in a year or two to put us over the top.

So, I think that I'm being objective about the job that David Griffin has done. I don't get paid to say great things about him.