Why Blake Griffin doesn't need to punch back

The main criticisms against Blake Griffin have finally been put to bed for anyone who has watched the Clippers big man evolve this season. Talk about Griffin being a 'dunker' with no real offensive game and no defense is no more.

This season, Griffin is still a breathtaking destroyer of ball and rim, but he's also emerged as one of the game's best interior scorers, his defense has taken steps forward and he legitimately carried one of the six best teams in the league for over a month with Chris Paul out of the lineup, averaging 27.5 points, 8.2 rebounds, 4.4 assists and 1.4 steals in the 18 games sans Paul in January and early February. The Clippers went 12-6 over that stretch.

For the season, Griffin is averaging 24.4 points on a 59.0 True Shooting Percentage to go with 9.6 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.1 steals. He's got a top-10 PER at 23.99 and a top-five Win Shares mark at 10.1, behind only Kevin Durant, LeBron James and Kevin Love.

He still has plenty of room to grow on the defensive side of the ball and he can become an even more devastating offensive player if he continues to bring his free throw percentage up (currently at a career-high 69.8), but Griffin has evolved from a superstar talent and superstar name to an unquestionable superstar player, and with the Clippers poised to challenge for a title for the foreseeable future, that superstardom should continue to grow provided good health.

But the other rub against Griffin, and the one he hasn't yet shaken, is the one made popular by the type of fans and 'analysts' who pick a critique when a player is young and harp on the same thing for years - and that's that he isn't tough enough. Charles Barkley, especially, has harped on the notion that Griffin needs to respond to the physical play against him with some borderline dirty play of his own.

For those people, Monday night's performance against the Suns, where Griffin poured in 37 points on an incredible 14-of-16 shooting including 29 points in the first half, will likely be overshadowed by Griffin being punched in the face by P.J. Tucker in the fourth quarter.

Griffin doesn't exactly retaliate. He gets heated and pulled away by teammates, and he even appears to yell "every F-ing game" as he walks away, perhaps a sign that he is reaching his breaking point with the Blake-bullying going on.

But he doesn't punch back. To guys like Chuck and others who feel the same way, this is probably yet another sign of an absence of toughness - getting punched in the face (albeit kind of lightly, sorry P.J.) and pretty much walking away.

But what if it's actually a sign of mental toughness instead of a desperate attempt to prove physical toughness? What if it's really a sign of discipline and being aware of how much his presence on the floor means to his team? Here's what Griffin told NBA.com just a few weeks ago:

“I’ve been experiencing things like that since high school,” Griffin said during All-Star weekend. “Being a bigger guy you kind of get fouled a lot, fouled harder, and it’s something my dad always taught me and told me is just to respond with how you play because you don’t want to put your team in a bad situation by getting kicked out of the game.”

A look at his numbers this season and his evolution over the last couple of years tells us that Griffin is doing just that, responding with his play. And his reaction to fouling out of Monday night's game after picking up an offensive foul just moments after play resumed following Tucker's punch shows just how frustrated he was by not being able to continue playing:

As he sat there, forced to watch from the bench with head in his hands and in his Hulk-like, self-torn jersey as the Suns staged a rally that ultimately came up short, it was pretty obvious that this is a guy who would rather be on the floor, playing basketball, not worrying about punching back.

Griffin can sometimes be annoying to watch when he's instigating, flopping and whining, so we can only imagine how obnoxious he must be to actually play against for fellow big men that see him as a fake tough guy. But the most obnoxious thing about playing against Blake Griffin is probably that he's really freaking good for a 24-year-old big man who's supposed to be just a soft, one-dimensional dunker.

Sure, he could punch back one of these days to deter bigs from future confrontations with the 6-10, 250-pound youngster, getting himself ejected and maybe suspended in the process of proving his toughness. Or he can just stay on the floor and continue to punch back with 24, nine, three and one for a championship contender. Which one sounds better?