The NBA has seen a big surge in views this year to its YouTube channel, thanks, in big part, to LA Clippers forward Blake Griffin. Last season, the NBA drew 73.9 million views. So far this year they've nearly matched that with 61.4 million views and almost roughly four months left in the season.

Griffin, who's best known for his crowd-electrifying dunking abilities, is the fastest rising search among NBA players, and, globally, the fastest rising search on YouTube since September associated with the term "highlights" is "Blake Griffin" ("Michael Vick" is #2). He's also the top search associated with "dunk," obviously, since he's done it so much that, by the end of November, the league already had enough clips to assemble a top 10 highlight reel.

In roughly the past month or so, the NBA has posted 17 videos with Griffin's name in the title. Lebron James, who's one of the most searched NBA players overall, was featured 14 times. For the 2010-2011 season, the top three most-watched NBA videos are Griffin clips. (John Wall of the Wizards has also been heavily searched, but he has his own dance.)

The sharpest spike came after his performance in a November game against the Knicks, but we're likely to see another spike in February as Griffin was just officially announced among the competitors for this year's All-Star dunk contest.



(Oh, and here's another one from yesterday.)