Clippers made T-shirts likening Blake Griffin to Obama, MLK, other 'pioneers'

The Los Angeles Clippers rolled out the metaphorical red carpet for Blake Griffin on Friday, and convinced him to sign a five-year, $173 million contract with the franchise that drafted him way back in 2009.

The Clippers’ Friday afternoon pitch was reportedly very elaborate. It included what Bill Oram of the Orange County Register described as “a Blake Griffin museum, basically.”

It also apparently included a T-shirt that placed Griffin alongside none other than Barack Obama, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Muhammad Ali, John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein and Mahatma Gandhi:

And … waaaaait a minute … is that Michael Jackson, too?

It certainly is.

Spears provided additional context in a follow-up tweet later in the day:

It’s unclear when exactly these shirts were worn, or by whom, on Friday. Regardless, this is completely over the top, and probably not totally OK, if we’re being honest. To liken Griffin to some of the most important figures in world history is a bit tone-deaf.

As a bit of free-agent salesmanship, though, it is also kind of wonderful, perfect, and wonderfully, perfectly absurd — another example of why the NBA is so damn entertaining.

And if you, too, would like to be a Pioneer … well, thanks to friend of BDL and Patti Lapel proprietor Jensen Karp, you’re in luck:

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