Damion Lee has officially had one of the strongest starts of any rookie this year, putting up fourteen points in this game after scoring thirteen (now a weak, impotent number) in his NBA debut a few nights prior. And it’s not like the Hawks had him go out there and chuck in order to get gaudy numbers, even though they totally could have. He’s doing his damage with efficiency and precision. Officially.
However, I must remind them him that he should never, under any circumstances, directly or indirectly, take away minutes from Josh Magette. It might not seem like it’s possible for a non-distributing small forward/shooting guard like Lee to take away minutes from a point guard, but it totally is. Lee’s unexpected emergence will have a ripple effect across the lineup if he starts getting more minutes than the 22 MPG he’s seeing right now in his two games. And that could effect the amount of fourth-string PG minutes that Magette receives in a negative way.
I have upped the stakes. If I found out that Magette’s minutes are being STOLEN by Damion Lee, I will enter his name hundreds of times into a raffle where the winner receives a hundred-pound crate of various meat products. When he inevitably is the recipient of the meat crate, he will have no idea what to do with it because he’s undoubtedly living a simple life in Atlanta while he waits to see what his next NBA stop might be. There’s no way he can fit that much meat into his fridge. It will cause him so much stress. But that’s what he deserves if he takes away Magette’s minutes.