P.J. Tucker opened the season with a twenty-point outburst that doubtless had Rockets fans salivating at his scoring potential. Please humor me while I set up a strawman of a clueless Rockets fanbase and then tear it down to make myself feel better. These stupid Rockets fans saw Tucker score twenty and they probably were like “I can’t believe our GM is such a genius, we got another piece for our championship core, I bet he’ll average twelve points per game easy with all the looks that Harden and CP3 get for him”. They thought these things despite Tucker’s entire body of work painting him as a defensive specialist with no scoring game to speak of other than the occasional three-pointer. Then those Rockets fans went around telling everybody what a steal Tucker was and how the Suns/Raptors were misusing him and he’s already better than Trevor Ariza because he plays real defense and not fake defense.
Man. Rockets fans can be so dumb sometimes. It was obvious to any outside observer that Tucker would probably not score above twenty points again for the whole season. He came close here by scoring eighteen, but his next highest after this one is twelve. So, for the vast majority of the season, his second-highest point total was just a dozen, even though he often got playing time in excess of thirty minutes. They shouldn’t have gone around telling everybody how much of a stud and vital contributor Tucker was when he’s simply a good role-player.
There. I feel better now.