The hard-fought battle between centers of marginal quality continues on in Lakerland. After a string of games where he was only getting pity minutes from Luke Walton, Ivica “Zu Tycoon” Zubac played so well in this one that Walton had no choice but to give him 28 minutes. That, predictably, cut into Tyson Chandler’s minutes, and it decimated JaVale McGee’s minutes.
I don’t know if Walton’s center rotations are matchup-based, if they’re based on who is actually good at baskeball, or if they’re based on a pseudorandom number generator that he downloaded on his phone. At the beginning of the season, McGee was the man, then Zubac was the man for a few games where he was playing well, then the Lakers traded for Chandler and he was the man for a bit. And that’s not even getting into the “Kyle Kuzma can be a small-ball center” experiment that has been attempted (presumably without much success).
Personally, I’m still rooting for McGee because I need him to accumulate a lot of dunks for my end-of-season dunkilation, but having Zu Tycoon scoring this many points is a fine alternative.
By the way, I just thought of an even better nickname for Zubac: Banana Croat! Because he’s a Croat, and because he plays for the Lakers who are sort of banana-colored, and because the concept of a Banana Boat has entered NBA lore. This is a great nickname.