Fred “Prime Gerald Wallace” VanVleet’s final statline tonight: 19 points, 7 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals, 3 blocks. He got those stats not as a do-it-all small forward, but as a point guard who is, realistically, only like 5’10”. Yeah, the NBA lists him at 6 feet. They also list J.J. Barea at that height; they obviously cannot be trusted.
Three blocks for a player of his stature, no matter how unimpressive they are (if you were expecting utter rejections from the heavens, you have a very distorted view of what this guy is capable of), is really impressive. D.J. Augustin has played almost 800 minutes without even getting one; this guy got three in only a few minutes of game time in the first half.
I thought about trying to have a “Rockford Heritage Night” in honor of VanVleet after the success of my Ben Simmons-inspired “Australian Heritage Night”, but then I realized that the only things I know about Rockford is that it sucks and that they have a supposedly nice Japanese botanical garden. Sorry, Rockfordians! If you guys have a culture that extends beyond drug use, I sure don’t know about it.