Chris Copeland’s story is one of those stories where you read it and you feel all goopy inside. After a stint in the D-League, Copeland went to Europe to find himself. Drifting from team to team, he gathered wisdom from his European teammates, wisdom so arcane that it was considered unknowable by most American players: smoke a lot of dope and shoot a lot of shots. Armed with this knowledge, he went back to the States and found a team that would give him a shot: the New York Knicks. After a studly Summer League, the Knicks stuck him on the end of the bench and told him to stay there.
Now, I don’t know about the dope-smoking part, but it is apparent that Copeland likes to shoot a lot of shots. If he can keep those shots falling, and isn’t just in the middle of a randomly-occurring hot streak, the Knicks will be forced to elevate his status from “player who only plays because of injuries” to “player who only plays because all of our players are old and decrepit”. And from that point it’s only a small step to “player who only plays because everybody else sucks worse than he does”. Eyes on the prize my man! Eyes on the prize!