It’s official: despite looking very similar to Tony Snell, Taurean Prince is way, WAY better than him. By a really big amount. For real. I think Snell had 0 points last game in like 30 minutes of action. In case you can’t read the title of this vid, well actually if you can’t read that than you won’t be able to read this, but Prince had 38 points tonight. In case you wanted to fact-check my work.
That’s not to say that Prince hasn’t had some pretty garbo games recently. He definitely has. He’s not a great overall player right now, capable of nights like this way less often than he’s capable of sucking, but that’s partially a result of his role. The Hawks have excised anyone good from the rotation, leaving Prince as the “best” offensive player on the court more often than anyone would like. But imagine him as the replacement for DeMarre Carroll back when the Hawks had 4 other All-Stars in the starting lineup… oh yeah, doesn’t that… actually, that’s not a good thing to thing about. You could put a potato in there, or worse, Tony Snell, and it would find success in that environment.
The Hawks, as they say, out-tanked the Bulls tonight, even with Prince’s career-high performance that was almost a 40-burger but he ran out of time in the fourth quarter. Isn’t Silver supposed to be warning teams not to be so blatant about it? An unexpected 38 from a seriously role-y role-player should be enough to catapult most teams to a win against Chicago.