As job requirements go, the NBA's mandate that each of its players must be made available to the media once a day is a fairly mild one. It is a chore and mostly mindless; the questions are usually more like prompts to elicit sound bites. But over time, most players learn to embrace and accept it.

But on this day, Los Angeles Clippers forward Blake Griffin looked especially uncomfortable. The crowd for this Friday morning practice was bigger than normal because the Clippers had just returned home from an awful road trip to Atlanta and New York, where they blew home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs.

Griffin has never cared much for these scrums. He's far deeper and wittier than most people realize, but his insights and personality don't come across well in a forced setting like this. Like most good counterpunchers, and a lot like his best finishes on the basketball court, he needs a good setup to play off of.

The media glare takes a while to get used to for superstars in the making. Joe Murphy/NBAE/Getty Images

But it wasn't the size of the crowd that seemed to be bothering him then. It was his overgrown beard. The Clippers began growing them after they clinched their first playoff berth in six years with a win over the Oklahoma City Thunder on April 16. Griffin swore at the time that it would be fun, that he could indeed grow a full beard. But two weeks into the exercise, all he had was an itchy mess around his neck and jaw that was only going to get worse the more he scratched it.

"I don't really like it," he said, rubbing his chin. "But it's a team thing, so I'll go with it."

It's fitting, in a way, that Griffin's first taste of the playoffs is accompanied by something as uncomfortable and awkward as this beard. Very little about his second season in the NBA has gone smoothly. The spectacular dunks that made him a star as a rookie have cast him as something of a villain now. If he stares too long after he lands, people say he's preening. Never mind that openly celebrating would go over far worse. Opponents vow to avenge their teammate's honor. Referees are tasked with stopping the vigilante justice but are largely powerless to do much beyond calling a flagrant foul.

Griffin can do nothing but play through it and endure the hits, physical and otherwise. If he retaliates, his image is tarnished. The Subway commercials, the Kia ads. All would be jeopardized. Worse, the league probably would suspend him a game or two, costing his team.

It has been more brutal than brilliant to watch. The joy of discovering him as a rookie has been marred by a second act of painful grimaces, flagrant fouls and hard knocks. Griffin has been fouled flagrantly more than any other player in the league last season (10 times) and this season (five times). The next-highest total over the same two-year span? LeBron James' seven.

On the night Griffin began growing his playoff beard, we walked out of the arena together. He moves slowly after games. His body was still numb after icing down for 20 minutes in the locker room. As he thawed out, the pain started. I asked what he made of it all.

Griffin shook his head and said: "People keep telling me that everybody has to go through it at some point."

He doesn't mean everybody, of course. Only would-be superstars have to pass through an initiation process this rigorous.

Blake Griffin's first playoff game was a wild ride: The Clippers rallied from a 27-point deficit to beat the Grizzlies. AP Photo/Danny Johnston

It's a compliment, although it doesn't feel like it all the time. The place he intends to go is earned, not given.

"This year, I'm under the microscope," Griffin says. "I'm really being critiqued in every single area, which is fine."

He's nodding as he speaks, agreeing with the unwritten rules he's unearthing. The postpractice scrum has broken up and mostly dispersed. He's free to go but decides to linger a few minutes to finish our conversation. I ask whether he's having any fun.

"It's been rough," he says, forgetting about his beard for a moment. "But we've won basketball games, we're going to the playoffs. So I've definitely had way more fun this year."

Mo Williams has seen this before. Not this part, exactly. LeBron was in his fifth year by the time Williams joined him in Cleveland. But the initiation process is the same for every player of this ilk. When you've seen it once, you spot it again immediately.

"I got Bron when he was already in his fifth year, he was already in polished mode," Williams said. "Blake, I got him now when he's really young still. Come ask me about Blake when he's in his fifth year."

Williams says it as though it's a certainty that Griffin will come out the other side of this process intact and better for it. He likes that the kid listens to him and other veterans. That he asks questions when he doesn't know something but seems to pick up just as much by watching.

Griffin gets what's happening to him now. Why he's being treated this way by his peers. Why they test him. Superstardom is not supposed to come as easily as it did last season. The league, the game itself, is pushing back at him now.

"All players in this game have pride," Williams said. "Especially big men. They have the most pride. They see highlights. They see the attention he gets from a simple dunk, in their eyes. So obviously they're going to set the tone."

As he talks about Griffin, Williams is reminded of another superstar who incurred the wrath of the league's big men.

"I remember watching the documentaries on Michael Jordan where he said the Detroit series really made him grow up," Williams said.

"I'm not comparing [Griffin] to Jordan by any means. He's got a long way to go to be mentioned in that category, just as far as the abuse. Jordan used to fly everywhere, dunking the ball. Detroit made an effort to put him on his back. Jordan responded well to it. This year is Blake's turn."

Around the league, the refrain is pretty consistent. Griffin should've responded to the physical play, somehow, someway. Suspension be damned.

Kobe Bryant and Blake Griffin share a work space and mutual respect. AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill

"I'd smack the f--- out of somebody," Lakers star Kobe Bryant said. "I've known [Griffin] for a while, and he's a really nice guy, so I don't know if he'd want to do that. But I would. I would've done it early in the year.

"At some point, you have to protect yourself. Sometimes you have to say, 'Look, you're not going to do this to me. I'll take two games, but you're not going to put my health at risk by injuring me potentially. It's not going to happen.'"

Bryant has long been an admirer of Griffin's. Last season, he publicly took Griffin's side after he got into a scuffle at the end of a game with Lakers forward Lamar Odom, saying: "You play 'til the final buzzer sounds. That's the way I grew up playing."

Bryant's comments on how to respond to the harsh physical treatment should be taken as advice, not criticism. If anything, Bryant was doing him a favor simply by commenting on the issue and confirming that Griffin is being hacked by opponents.

The problem is that it's too late now to do anything about it.

"Now is not the right time," Griffin said. "We're going into the playoffs. We need everybody on the floor. We can't give up stupid points as far as technicals or flagrants. You've just got to keep your composure and whenever something like that is happening, realize why it's happening."