When Bogdan Bogdanovic scored 9 points in the first quarter, I refused to let myself get hyped. I’ve been burned too many times by players who start out hot and then fizzle out quickly. Sure, sometimes you get a player who continues scoring the whole game and ends up with 30 or 40, but most of the time those 10-point quarters end up being part of a 20-point game.
And look what happened! I am vindicated for my lack of hype. Bogdanovic converted only two more buckets the whole rest of the game. Usually a quick-starting player will just start bricking; in defiance of societal norms, Bogdanovic just stopped shooting instead. Um. Excuse me? It’s 2017, and if you’re a Euro rookie on a bad team, you don’t just stop shooting. You keep going until the coach gets tired of your crap. No one would have thought any less of Bogey if he took some pullup threes in transition or tried to post up Andre Drummond.