Naz “King of All Known Advanced Stats” Mitrou-Long was mostly known to me, until this game, as the dude who hit 1 three in his 31 seconds of play time last season, put up no other stats, and thus notched the best single season performance of all time. His PER was somewhere in the range of 1 million to 2 million. His winshares were similarly ludicrous. Those stats reflected his true value as a player; a guy who can make a three every thirty seconds without ever missing instantly becomes the GOAT of all time, and all other times too.
Unfortunately, his second season hasn’t quite lived up to his first. He’s gone from hitting all his threes to only hitting 18 percent of them, from 2 per minute down to 1 per 36 minutes. It was maybe unreasonable to think he’d build on his rookie year during his sophomore year. It’s not all sad though: he’s got rebounds, assists, steals (just one steal actually), and blocks (just one block actually) now! So his scoring is down, but he’s become more of a well-rounded player.
Nazareth’s well-roundedness was on full display, here, in the final game of the regular season for the Jazz, as he put up a near double-double with 9 points on 9 assists. Again, I really wish I had the Jazz home commentary for this one; the national announcers were not interested at all in Mitrou-Long having the game of his career. Sometimes I think they aren’t as devoted to the cause of the scrub as I am.