I will not stop being amazed at how much Nicolas Batum is getting paid. I know I bring it up in almost every description, but in fairness to myself, is there anything else to talk about regarding him? No. He only exists as a number in a spreadsheet. Or, 22,434,783 numbers.
He had a good shooting game tonight. 22 points, mostly on jumpers, if he was doing this kind of thing semi-regularly he’d still be overpaid, but not by much. But he doesn’t do this semi-regularly, or intermittently, or occasionally, or anything. This many points is a rare occurrence for him, and I can’t figure out why. Why can’t he shoot threes this year? If he could just learn to do that again maybe things could be salvaged.
Luckily for Hornets fans, unlike, say, the Deng situation in Los Angeles or the Noah situation in New York, no one is really paying attention to how bad Batum’s contract is. There are two reasons for that: for one, Batum is still definitely playable and for two, the Hornets are possibly the most irrelevant team in the league. Were it not for Dwight Howard/Kemba Walker, would they ever register in the mind of the average fan?