Tarik “Tarrick Rose” Black sure caught me off guard. I have a file of NBA players that I try to keep up-to-date, but off to the side, I have another file called “Players You Don’t Need to Worry About.” Roko Ukic and Marcus Cousin are in there. So are guys who were drafted but who never played (Sergiy Gladyr, Chukwudiebere Maduabum, Fran Vazquez [lol], etc.). Tarik Black was in there too; while I knew he would get spot minutes, I didn’t feel that he was a threat to put together a highlight-worthy performance. Even YouTube doesn’t have an auto-tag suggestion for him.
And now here we are.
Tarrick Rose is supposed to be a good rebounder. That’s cool. Houston needs a big guy outside of Dwight who doesn’t shoot euro-soft threes (Donuts Motiejunas) and who isn’t a terminal manlet (Joey Dorsey). If he can score a little bit on top of that, well, that’s just peaches and cream.