I wish this was some kind of corporate zeitgeist type of synergistic marketing campaign with Marvel, alas, I am but a simple man and have no need for Disney money. (*cries poor tears.) Or perhaps Disney has no need for lazy puns? WHO KNOWS. All I know is, we are all feeling a bit of doom after yesterday’s news that Victor Wembanyama will miss the rest of the season with a shoulder injury… essentially a blood clot (*cries in Chris Bosh) which is a bit worrisome with a player of that height.
Any basketball fan probably has always felt a bit of anxiety when a 7-foot-plus phenom enters the NBA, as their shelf-life can vary wildly due to injuries, and while we can all breathe a sigh of relief that this isn’t a major leg injury, we also have to understand that this diagnosis is just as serious unless it’s a one-time event. I’ll leave the doctering to the doctors, but all we can do is hope for the best. Fun little Wemby fact by the way, even though his season is over, he’ll still be winning his second straight blocks title at 195 (the next nearest I believe is Kessler, and he’d need 93 blocks or something the rest of the way. So yeah, wrap that up.)
The Spurs did manage to win against the reeling Suns, a team very much on the precipice of falling out of the play-ins for good… Kevin Durant (22 PTS and 5 REB) and Devin Booker (17 PTS, 8 AST) continue to be somewhat tepid bright spots, but I think it’s fair to say that this team just does not work. The thing is, I would normally just blanket-blame (totally a term) this on Olympics, but, I mean, Joker did that too and he’s, ya know, a leading MVP candidate. There’s just this sort of malaise that’s fallen over and you can just see it in the way they play.
In a tale of two back-two-backs, the Lakers laid an egg and then, I don’t know what the opposite of that is. Luka Doncic still looks like he’s coming back from an injury (11/4/4ish averages), wild, I know, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Kawhi, for example, didn’t start scoring 20+ points until after a few weeks. I don’t worry too much about Father LeTime either, but from the meta perspective, I don’t think the Lakers can withstand the defensive hit they took with losing Anthony Davis and playing footsie with Mark Williams. Then again, what team wants to see this duo in the play-ins?
