Normally I would characterize Ersan Ilyasova’s 21-point outburst against his former team, the Atlanta Hawks, as a REVENGE GAME. Certainly it has all the qualities that a proper REVENGE GAME would have: it’s against a former team, and he scored a decent amount of points. But I’m getting this feeling that Ilyasova doesn’t actually harbor that much of a desire to exact REVENGE on his former team. Nothing in his body language indicated to me that he was deriving extra pleasure for scoring points on the Hawks.
And why should he? The Hawks are the ones who showed him mercy by buying him out of his contract so he could sign with a team that was going to the playoffs. They could have just held on to him as one of those veteran guys that can make the team watchable enough to put heinies in the seaties. Sure, Ilyasova’s time with the Hawks might have been wasted time, but he’s wasted a lot of time in his career; that’s why the Hawks took pity on him and removed the chains that chained him to their tank.
So, all things considered, this was NOT a REVENGE GAME. It was just a normal game played under normal circumstances, and Ilyasova happened to score 21 points in a non-vengeful manner.