Blake Griffin brings The Stepback to opening night, a late-night show built on questions he still has

Blake Griffin starts his next career on the same night the NBA starts its season: The Stepback with Blake Griffin, the late-night sports show he will host each week, premieres on Tuesday, October 20, on Prime Video and YouTube. For a player who spent a decade as one of the league’s most recognizable faces with the Los Angeles Clippers, it is the clearest sign yet of where he wants his voice to land now that his playing days are over.

The timing is deliberate. Tuesday’s opening night has three games, headlined by the Knicks hosting the 76ers at Madison Square Garden, and new episodes of Griffin’s show will follow every Tuesday through the season.

Not a highlights show

Griffin has been clear that he is not building another nightly reaction program. Each episode takes one big subject and digs into it in front of a live studio audience, with jokes doing the work that graphics and hot takes do elsewhere. The early list of topics reads more like a policy desk than a postgame panel: the economics of sports betting, name-image-likeness money in college sports, the growing reach of analytics, youth sports, officiating and the culture of instant outrage.

He told reporters he chose the late-night format on purpose, even while admitting that “late night is sort of a dying genre in a way.” The draw for him was the room itself, a crowd that reacts in real time. He also said the first season was planned to age well rather than chase the week’s headlines.

What he does not want is a show about his own career. Griffin said he is hosting because he played and because “there’s still questions that I have about all these topics”, which puts the former No. 1 pick in the role of the curious fan rather than the retired star telling old stories.

A player-built production

The show comes from Mortal Media, the company Griffin runs with former NFL offensive lineman Ryan Kalil, in partnership with Amazon’s Wondery. It joins a growing group of athlete-led programs under Amazon’s creator banner, and it extends a relationship that began when he took a seat on Amazon’s NBA studio desk last season. Episodes were taped ahead of the premiere, and the trailer went up on his own account a week ago.

Griffin has never hidden the comic streak that made his commercials and his 2011 Slam Dunk Contest win so memorable. Asked by Bleacher Report for a Finals pick while promoting the show, he went with a rematch of the last two champions, the Knicks against the Thunder, and named the Spurs as the team most likely to crash that party.

What comes next

The first episode drops Tuesday, the same night Griffin’s Finals picks get their first test: the Spurs host the Thunder in a conference finals rematch, and the Knicks raise their banner against the 76ers at 7 p.m. ET. Follow both in the WhyNBA Game Center: Thunder vs. Spurs and 76ers vs. Knicks.