Trevor Ariza’s 14.7 scoring average with the Wizards is approaching the career-best 14.9 he averaged with Houston nearly a decade ago. No, this isn’t a leadup to a big paragraph about how he’s now too good for my channel. I wish that were the case, but it’s not. What I’m trying to say is, he’s been pretty good for the ‘Zards after sludging it up in Phoenix. A nice surprise, since I figured that without John Wall magically making him better like he did in his last stint with him, he wouldn’t be very good.
His shooting numbers are really bad still, barely over 30 percent on threes, but now that Washington is finally winning some games, we’re not going to hear about it. His scoring average is so high mainly because he’s playing tons of minutes and chucking tons of threes, but when you remove all context from it, it looks damn good.
I’m looking at the standings in the East right now, and here’s the deal: the ‘Zards with Ariza as the second mate and Beal as the captain are sitting at the 9th seed. All they have to do is stay ahead of Detroit (easy) and Orlando (who are never good), and then catch either Miami or Charlotte. And then, BAM, they’re in the ‘offs. And once they get there, who knows what’s going to happen. Maybe they can hope Toronto takes the first seed and then sweep them in the first round like they always do.