Is AJ Griffin actually considering retiring? | Gary Parrish Show

AJ Griffin former five-star recruit Duke Blue Devil and top 20 pick in the NBA draft is reportedly seriously considering retiring from basketball at the age of 21 you don't see that every day do you no he would be walking away from millions of dollars and probably more money than he'll ever be able to make again I I don't want to say no him I don't know him but I did a story about him and his sister when were either both in high school or maybe one of them was in college and one of them was in high school but I just thought it was interesting because there's this family father of course is Adrien Griffin who was very briefly the coach of the Milwaukee Bucks this past year got fired even though he had a good record they fired him because it was like he seemed to have issues with some of the players and didn't seem to didn't seem to be going well even if the record was okay so they moved him he's the dad the kids I thought this was interesting cuz I thought it was unprecedented and now we know will probably never happen again there was a brother and a sister Adrien Griffin's kids and the sister signed to go play for Gino ARA at Yukon and the brother signed to play for Mike sheski at Duke so you had a siblings playing for arguably if not undeniably the two greatest college basketball coaches on the men's and women's side in history at the same time so I was like all right maybe there's a story there so did that story and while reporting that story and some of the comments afterward it got really ugly like the family Dynamic is not good um between the mom and the dad the former husband and wife and the truth is though AJ Griffin has always been talented since he got the Duke he's never been what he was supposed to be he wasn't great in his one year at Duke even though he was a five-star recruit he then slipped in the draft relative to where people thought he was going to be picked a year earlier then he gets to the NBA and he had a couple of like little moments but then kind of quickly settled into a situation where it's like is this guy even going to be in the league in a few years and now even though he's still in the league and still under contract seriously considering walking away and he hasn't expanded on this and all so it's probably silly to speculate but when you are walking away from something that pays you millions of dollars at the age of 21 with no guarantee of what you're going to do next or how you're going to make a living going forward there's got to be some real stuff going on with you to get to that place right I talked to some people about it last night we were texting and you know somebody who covers recruiting told me that they just never got the sense that he really loved basketball that he was awesome at it cuz good jeans yeah and then he because he grew up in it you know when I would talk to Adrian about AJ he was like you know I would get done with practice and then he'd be waiting on me at the front door um wanting to go back to the gym so I then take him back to the gym but at some point that seemed to go away like he didn't seem to love it anymore this is other people's perception not necessarily mine I wasn't around it that closely but other people who were were like at some point the love of basketball just went away and then he was just doing it because he was good at it not doing it because he cared about it anymore similar thing happened to Rachel heck in golf yeah that's true she was once considered like the next great thing and she just seemingly lost her passion for it or just decided she doesn't want to live that lifestyle as a professional golfer at least not right now so she has for the most part walked away from the sport um even though it um she's awesome at it and there could be a a lucrative um lifestyle attached to it maybe not the same lifestyle that's attached to say John Rah or Roy Mary but still you know you can make a lot of money playing professional golf on the women's side and she's just decided that she doesn't want to do that it's very hard for I think most of us to understand how somebody could be so good at something and then just not want to do it think about most of us we have basketball goals in our driveways and we go out there and play even though we suck at it nobody's paying us to do it or we go out to the golf course every weekend and spend real money and real time doing something even though we're not good at it and nobody's paying us to do it so then you look at somebody who is good at something and they could get paid to do it and they say but I don't want to do it anymore right that's always interesting to me like how do you reach that point very unusual but AJ Griffin is not the first person to sort of reach a point earlier than most where he just says I don't want to to do this anymore there is real no precedent though for somebody leaving the sport at 21 for any period of time any extended period of time and then coming back and having a good career in the NBA it's not so if his idea is to step away from now and then come back later uh he might be able to do it but it's not a it's not something that's happened too often or even ever before so it's just an unusual story you just hope the young man's doing okay yeah because I imagine on some level something's not going okay if you get to the point where you want to walk away from this thing you're obviously gifted to do and people are paying you quite literally millions of dollars to do it and you say I can't I can't do it anymore something's got to be going on yeah uh so whatever that is I hope it uh hope it gets better the Gary Paris show live weekdays at 10:00 a.m.