Aron “Angry Australian Topknot Santa” Baynes is halfway through his seventh season in the league. Since he wasn’t a young rookie (entering the NBA at age 26 after spending his early twenties riding kangaroos around the Australian outback while yelling “crikey”), he’s a lot older than most players who are playing in their seventh season: 32 years of age.
So while you might think that Baynes is just reaching his peak, the reality is, he’s probably peaked already and is currently declining. That’s why he tried to add a goofy-looking three-point shot to his arsenal: he sees that bigs who can shoot threes have a lot more longevity these days than bigs who can only score garbage buckets near the rim.
One thing that works in Baynes’ favor is the fact that he’s been a low-minutes role-player for his entire career, thus saving considerable mileage (kilometerage?) on his legs. Unlike a player who’s been banging with the big boys on a 30 PPG basis for a decade and a half, Baynes has been spared many of the rigors of being a big in the NBA. That is assuming, of course, that his stints with the Australian national team are of normal intensity. For all I know, him and Andrew Bogut spend every practice crashing into each other while yelling “cunt”. That would put wear and tear on anybody.
Especially me. If either one of Bogut or Baynes were to run into me full speed, the last thing I would think about before my death was whether or not my YouTube password was anywhere in my will.