Jahlil “Jah Rule” Okafor appeared to have a good game here. He was nine of twelve from the field, and he got those points opportunistically, rather than doing lumbering Al Jefferson impersonations all over the place. He also had eight rebounds (good) to go with zero assists, zero steals, and zero blocks (not so good, but he’s not expected to do those things anyway). If you’re like me and you love to make snap judgments based on box-scores without thinking about anything, Okafor looked great out there.
The thing is, he was a -21 in the plus/minus column, by far the worst on the team. When he was in the game, Steven Adams was eating. EATING. AT THE RIM. It was like an all-you-can eat buffet for the big Kiwi. Then, with the Pelicans down 18 at the beginning of the fourth quarter, the decision was made to play Cheick Diallo instead of Okafor. Jah Rule never got on the court again, and the Pelicans had reduced the deficit to six when all was said and done.
Single-game plus/minus is often a bad stat, but I think it illustrates a point here. Okafor is so limited defensively, even when he tries, that his offensive contributions will get overwhelmed by his defensive non-contributions. Oh well. His highlight videos are fun to watch at least.