I might cause some uproar by saying this, but the various Balkan states have so much tension between each other that there’s no reason for the outrageous display of Serb-on-Serb violence shown in this video. Going into the game, I figured we wouldn’t see much of the Boban Marjanovic vs. Nikola Jokic matchup because Boban hasn’t been getting any minutes with the Clippers, but he actually ended up playing most of the fourth quarter and, no lie, he probably won the game for his team. It was unnecessary to embarrass his fellow Serb with his towering height, massive girth, and intimidating countenance, but he did it and no amount of hand-wringing is going to undo it.
Boban’s Per-36 scoring for the Clippers is now an unfathomable 40 PPG, and his win-shares per 48 are a neat .513. That means that, if you played him the whole game, he would win you exactly one out of every two games all by himself, even if all his teammates just sat around sucking their thumbs, and Boban would win those games while scoring around 54 PPG.
People can talk to me all they want about “defensive liability” and “immobility”, but DTB doesn’t care about defense. When players are playing defense (or attempting to play defense) I actually look away from the screen because I don’t want to see it. That results in me missing every play that’s not an undefended fast-break, but what can I say? I don’t care about defense. And since I don’t care about defense, there’s no reason why you can’t play Boban until he fouls out and maybe even after that point. He went from Can’t Van Coach to Doc “Reluctant to Put Non-Family Members on the Court” Rivers and that makes me both sad and angry on behalf of this not-so-gentle giant.