The last time Cole Aldrich started a game for the Clippers, he was playing with Chris Paul and it was a dunk festival (colloquially known as a “dunkfest”). I say “last time” loosely because I’m looking at his game log and it turns out he started a game in late March. Forget about the game. The game I’m talking about is where Aldrich scored nineteen because DeAndre Jordan had pneumonia (a made-up disease by the way).
That game I attributed to Chris Paul’s point-god status, rather than Aldrich’s own abilities as a basketball player. If you told me he was starting another game but had to play with Pablo Prigioni and Jamal Crawford as the primary distributors, I would predict maybe ten points for Aldrich, tops. Probably six. Absolutely, under no circumstances whatsoever, would he score more than twenty.
Look who’s the big dummy now. DTB is. Because Aldrich scored twenty points largely on the back of his own shot-creating ability. I knew he had some post moves but I didn’t know that he would regularly be able to bamboozle Rudy Gobert of all people with them. I swear Gobert was cross-eyed after some of those fakes. How does a flabby, immobile, Przybilla-esque guy like Aldrich even have footwork like that? He’s like the world’s biggest ballerina, except a ballerina would never be allowed to step on stage while missing a tooth.
There can only be one course of action after this performance: COLE ALDRICH OFFENSIVE CENTERPIECE AND FEATURED NUMBER ONE OPTION! STARTING NOW!