Months after getting punched out by Bobby Portis, Nikola Mirotic finally got his wish and was traded away from the organization the acted as the enabler for Portis’ violent behavior. I’m of the opinion that it was the organization that should have been traded away from Mirotic, but it’s the same in the end.
I almost panicked when I saw that the Pelicans were about to sign Terrence Jones, known homeless-person stomper, and ruin Mirotic’s vision of a non-violent and supportive basketball team, but luckily they backed out and signed Emeka Okafor instead. That’s an issue for a whole other day, but I can deal with that for sure.
So, Mirotic is on a new team now. How did he do? Pretty good! He stepped right in and acted as the secondary scorer that New Orleans needed him to be. 18 points on 13 shots (maybe not enough shots, what happened to the unabashed chucker we know and love?), to go with 12 rebounds. He didn’t exactly make Cousins obsolete with this performance, but his incredibly low (for Cousins) total of two turnovers had to be refreshing.