It sucks not being the man on a team anymore. I’ve found that out multiple times throughout my basketball career. I have the luxury of switching teams when it happens to me; I’m not playing against middle schoolers most of the time now and I’m like prime Shaq and Kobe rolled into one.
Dario Saric does not have that luxury. Well, he kinda does, if he wants to go play in the D-League or for some random Euro team that draws 100 fans per game. Otherwise, he’s not likely to find again the situation he was in last year, where the 76ers were Garbago Beans and he got to do whatever he wanted with the ball whenever he wanted to. I’m not going to call it stat-padding, because someone had to shoot the shots, and it really shouldn’t have been Nik Stauskas.
Saric has seen a minute reduction this year, either because of or causing his regressed statistical output. Is he shooting too many jumpers? Not enough jumpers? I feel like he needs to attack the rim more, but I don’t actually know. Hopefully this “vintage” performance by him gets him back on the path of the righteous, because he got a lot of hype last year and I feel like that hype is almost gone now.