David Nwaba is one of those shooting guards who has the “guard” part down pat but struggles with the “shooting” part. He can defend, rebound, finish at the rim, plus all the little things, but shooting from outside? Nah. 3-and-D without the 3. Until tonight.
Before this explosion, he had made a total of 6 three-pointers in his whole NBA career. If you were expecting Stephen Curry levels of three-bombing from him tonight, I would’ve considered you mentally incapable. If you were even expecting one three, I would’ve called you painfully optimistic. Looks like I’m the dumb one, along with Philly’s now-obsolete scouting report, because he hit three of the tonight as Joel Embad and Ben Simpletons could only look on in stunned silence (though I think I did hear a little sound of disbelief from Embad picked up by the rim microphone).
Combine those unexpected triples with a bunch of dunks and stuff, and you get more points than Nwaba has ever scored before in his NBA career. And he didn’t even need a ton of free-throws to do it. Hoiberg’s decision to insert him in the starting lineup over… Justin Holiday or somebody is looking really good. The Bulls didn’t win, but they didn’t want to win so that’s cool, and they got one of their young talents a bunch of really good game experience.
Hell, I’m looking at the boxscore and did Cameron Payne really put up 7 and 7? The Bulls are going to be my team to watch from now on.