Ivica Zubac has crossed over into the fabled category of players who shoot over 60% from the field. Unfortunately, he hasn’t had enough field goal attempts this season for it to really mean that much other than he’s played well in the games where he actually gets a non-trivial amount of minutes. After scoring 19 points in 20 minutes right before the All-Star break, he returned from his downtime to score 14 in 18 minutes. As the kids say, he’s too much of a beast.
Why was Zubac playing so few minutes before now, even to the point where he wasn’t appearing in games? I think the answer rhymes with Book No Pez. I understand that offloading both Mozgov’s crazy contract and D-Lo’s disruptive locker room presence was important, but it’s not like they have to play Lopez as much as he does. If you told him he would get only ten minutes a game he would probably be cool with that because the bones in his feet look like a cracked desert floor. By making that trade, they hindered the development of a young center who looked very promising in his rookie year, and Zubac’s only just now getting back into that stride.
Now I have to come up with a nickname for him that’s reminiscent of Mario Hezonja’s “Crobe”. How about “Greg Croatstertag”?