Somehow, at some point, the narrative on Jahlil Okafor switched from “he’s one of the worst players in the league” to “he’s being unfairly marginalized on the 76ers, he would be a beast on a different team”. And I’m not cherry-picking these opinions. By the middle of his second season, it was agreed by nearly everyone that he tanked every lineup he was a part of. And I think some anti-76ers bias caused the second one, because how could anyone advocate for any minutes at all for a center with his proven detrimental defects?
Now he’s on the Nets, finally moving on from the team that drafted him after what seemed like years of trade rumors, and guess what? He still sucks. His raw stats aren’t too bad, but they never were. It’s the advanced stats that hate him, as well as the eye test, and both those things still do. You could say it’s because he’s not in game shape or doesn’t know the schemes or whatever, but him being in game shape and knowing the schemes never helped his cause in the past.
Keeping that in mind (the fact that he sucks), he scored 17 points in 12 minutes tonight with a positive plus-minus, way outperforming Jarrett Allen. And the Nets won. They wouldn’t have won without the buckets he provided. The debate continues, I guess, except I don’t see why it’s still a debate when we settled it a long time ago already.