JaVale McGee set the tone for the Warriors tonight with his two dunks in the first minute of the game. He set the tone so hard that I think he deserves a shoutout in the upcoming Warriors championship DVD. I have vague recollections of a Bulls championship VHS (this was the mid 90’s when Chicago was winning chips and DownToBuck was an MJ nuthugger and unabashed Bulls bandwagoner) where they hyped up the contributions of Bill Wennington. They tried to sugarcoat it, but even I could tell that he didn’t really do that much but they wanted to pretend that the Bulls’ scrubs weren’t absolutely useless. I was not fooled. I knew Wennington sucked.
McGee can be the Warriors’ Wennington. “And in game 2, the Warriors came out strong on the back of a pair of dunks by the sparingly-utilized backup center, JaVale McGee”. He can be the guy who is held up to be some sort of savior of the game when all he did was put in a few lightly contested dunks. Granted, that’s more than Kevon Looney can do, because that dude seems like he can barely jam, and it’s way more than Zaza Pachulia can do, because that dude definitely no longer possesses the “hops” to dunk.
McGee’s well-documented ability to dunk anything even close to the rim (except when he’s getting rejected by it with no defenders in the vicinity) seems like a nice complement to his team’s otherwise outside-oriented game, but Kerr is continuously reluctant to even give him minutes, much less start him. I have expressed bewilderment at this situation before, and my bewilderment continues unabated. He can even shoot jumpers now! I don’t know what the problem is.