If there’s one lesson that I’ve recently learned, it’s that I shouldn’t avoid making a highlight video for a player just because they had a significantly better performance the game before. In this case, Royce O’Neale scored eighteen points a game ago, by far his best game as a pro, and those eighteen points make these thirteen points look like, on the surface, worthless garbage. However, thirteen is the second-highest point total of O’Neale’s young career. If the eighteen points had never happened, I would be falling all over myself to make this vid. Instead, there’s a part of me that’s saying “nobody will watch this inferior video you utter moron.” That part of me calls me a moron a lot.
I learned this lesson from Rashad Vaughn of all people. He scored 22 early last season, then followed that up a few games later with a fourteen-point showing. Since I am apparently very limited in intelligence, I didn’t make a video for the fourteen points because I was optimistic that Vaughn had turned the corner. Guess what, he hadn’t turned the corner then and still hasn’t turned the corner as of this writing. Now my mistakes are placed under the magnifying glass of public scrutiny because he just got traded to the Nets and all the Nets fans are desperately scouring the intertubes for his videos.
If Royce O’Neale gets traded at the deadline, at least I can confidently say, “I gave all fans of his new team every possible highlight video there was to give.”