On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being “not wanting to disrupt the flow of time at all” and 10 being “mad desire to manipulate temporal reality”, how much does Nikola Vucevic want to make a time machine so he can go to some period of NBA history where his 27/13/12 triple-double is not totally overshadowed by Nikola Jokic’s 35/12/11? I’m guessing about a 7. It must suck to put together a sick performance like this and then not even get recognition because some doof who shares your name but not your good looks does it slightly better.
Because, make no mistake about it, this was a ridiculous game by Vucci Mane. Lots of his assists were to Evan Fournier for threes, sure, but at least they were real assists unlike many of Jokic’s. And, yeah, he missed some shots, but he made all four of his threes and was really efficient. It’s not even his fault that his team lost. It’s Aaron Gordon’s.
I would make a joke about Vucevic stealing Ben Simmons’ powers and leaving him to weak and frail to continue playing, but I think I’ve played out the whole “forceful reaping of souls” angle in my descriptions. Still, the Philly fans in the absence of Simmons were at least given their fill of triple-double action.