With this performance, officially, with official officiality, Bruno Caboclo has avoided peaking in his first NBA game, the dreaded “MCW-itis”. Cast your mind back, way back, and remember how hyped you were when Caboclo checked into a game for the first time, and how your hyped reached previously unseen levels as he quickly threw down an alley-oop dunk against the Bucks. The threes he hit after that were great, but there was nowhere for your hype to go; you were already at maximum hype. 8 points was his final total, surely just a small taste of things to come.
Those were the days. Halcyon days. You know now to never get hyped for so little, but you were younger then. Younger, and more innocent. Naive enough to believe that Caboclo would be a good basketball simply by virtue of his incredible length.
Since that day, 2 and a half years ago, The Brazilian Durant has done a whole lot of nothing. He didn’t get to play hardly at all last year, except for some joke minutes in the last game of the regular season. Same with this year. The occasional brief appearance with little to show for it, except for the last game of the regular season. Tonight. Last chance to dance. Caboclo made the most of the opportunity, and had his best game ever, scoring 11 points with an incredible 5 made shots.
For some reason, the commentators weren’t as excited as I’d thought they’d be. Where are the endless replays of his three-pointer? After his last basket they barely mention that he cracked double-digits for the first time in his career. I’m not saying that they needed to be as pumped up as they were in his debut, but a little more emotion would’ve been nice. This is history we’re watching here, after all.