I guess it’d be more Frencho Victor in this case, but that sounds mildly racist, so we’ll just go with it since I’m almost certain all Victor Wembanyama word-play possibilities will be exhausted by next season. (That, and he’d probably take over Roman basketball pretty easily. I mean, who’s on their team besides Zombie Jesus the Pope?) Early bird gets the Latin, as they say! Who they are, no one knows, but whatever, we are living in the Wemby-poch and there’s no escape. (Unless his body parts start falling off, but the NBA gods can’t be that cruel, can they?) While I’ll always preface anything Wemby this season with my pronounced love for Chet Holmgren, it’s not like you’d be disappointed at all with either. However, with the hype and cost, Wemby certainly looked to be as I serenaded in the preseason, a difference-maker, but an expensive one. Well, that argument is fading everyday as Wembanyama continues his quest to stat-stuff everything. In an OT win last against the Nets, he put up 33 points, 16 rebounds, 7 assists on 54% shooting. If that line looks ridiculous, that’s because it is, the only other player that has had a line better than 33-16-7-7 was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. After that comp, nothing more needs to be said about that game, so let’s put it this way, Wembanyama now joins the aforementioned Kareem, Hakeem the Dream, The Admiral and Shaw as the only players to record five or more 25/10/5/5 games in a season. After those comps, nothing more needs to be said in this blurb…
Luka Doncic continues to carry the Mavericks on his back, basically solo’ing his team into what looks to be anything from the six seed down. As you can see from the amazing last 30 seconds of that game, Kyrie Irving got the win last night against the Nuggets with that 20-foot floater over Nikola Jokic, but don’t kid yourself, it was Luka’s 37/9/3 on 44/45/80 shooting that made this huge win possible. I mean, if your name wasn’t Kyrie or Luka last night, you went a combined 0-13 at the three, very Rec achievable for all of us, I know.
The Suns continue their strategy of “you can score whenever you want to, we just want to do it more and hope it works out”. While it’s had some measured success I’d say for both the Suns and the other team that employs this strat, the Pacers… sometimes, the other teams just scores more. Or in this case, way more. The Bucks put up 82 points in the first half against Phoenix, including tying an NBA record for most threes in a half with 18 with the game ending with 269 points scored and of course the Milwaukee win.
I’ll not speak of the Clippers doing their best to give me PTSD, but it should be noted that Jalen Johnson continues to show us some interesting things, getting a neat double-double on 18/12/6. It’ll be interesting to see how the Clippers finish, the old n’ busted strategy seems to be achieving peak status at the moment with Leonard, PG and Harden (and of course Westbrook) dealing with their own-injury issues. Not for nothing, but I said at the beginning of the season that this looked like the next coming of that Hakeem, Drexler, Barkley Rockets, and though it pains, it’s looking more and more prescient every day…
Jay is a longtime Razzball everything who consumes an egregious amount of Makers Mark as a vehicle to gain wisdom and augment his natural glow. Living in the D.C. area, he also likes spending time visiting the local parks and feeding lettuce to any turtles he encounters, including Mitch McConnell.
