Cameron “Can’t Play In the NBA” Payne is, contrary to what would be expected of him given his nickname, is playing in the NBA right now. The nickname refers to when Bulls coaches/FO people claimed that Payne wouldn’t be able to play at an NBA level after seeing his second practice, and the only reason it took that long was that maybe he had nerves in the first one. I’m not even making this up. I don’t know what kind of heartless bastard would leak that stuff, knowing that it would crush this kid’s confidence, but they did, and articles were written about it.
I admit, all I’ve seen from him in a Bulls uni so far is this particular highlight vid, so they could be right and he is unplayable garbage 99 percent of the time, but at least tonight, he did some stuff. 17 points worth of stuff, no assists worth of stuff but that’s fine. There are tons of NBA players who no one ever doubted were worthy (at least a little bit) of the league who haven’t scored that many points. Remember Jeff Foster? Played 13 years for the Pacers, grabbed thousands of rebounds, his career high in points was 3, off of three free-throws. And no one ever said about him “we got Garred”.