Russ Smith did all of his damage in the fourth quarter of this game. The Grizzlies scored forty for the quarter and turned an embarrassing blowout into an actual contest. I don’t even know how the collection of rookies and scrubs that the Grizzlies played for those twelve minutes managed to score forty, but this is the NBA. And the NBA is where amazing happens.
For your enjoyment, here would be Russ Smith’s stats if there was a coach out there who was genius enough to play him for a whole game:
64 points
16 assists
8 rebounds
8 fouls
20/20 from the line
That would make this career high look like child’s play. Unfortunately, there are no coaches who are brilliant enough to give Russ enough minutes to attempt to do this. The NBA actually stands for “No Brilliance Allowed”. The more you know!