Kevin Huerter AKA Butthuert AKA Kevin Huerant was the darling of the league for approximately one day – the day after he scored 29 points. That game seemed like his “coming out” moment, in the sense of showcasing his skills to the NBA fandom at large, not in the sense of awkwardly telling his mom that he thinks he likes dudes while riding in the car home from marching band practice. Whether or not he was actually “coming out” then or if it was just a singular fluke performance is up for debate, but it’s safe to say that the single-game success didn’t insantly and miraculously manifest into significantly improved play for Butthuert.
Since all scrubs are on my radar from almost the very beginning (“almost” being an important word here, as there are scrubs who evade my detection until they get more than pity minutes in games), there was no need for Kevin Huerant to “come out” to me. I already knew he was there and roughly what he was capable of. Since he was getting thirty-plus minutes per game in the absence of Kent Bazemore, I figured it was only a matter of time before he started putting up some decent scoring games. It was inevitable.
Now everybody’s cooled off on Butthuert being a sure-fire third core piece of the Hawks going forward, joining Young and Collins as a HARD CORE of players who will be feared league-wide in three years. Sure, he could maybe one day become a Klay Thompson-esque tertiary star, or he could just be a role-playing shooter who fans ironically latch onto because of his hair color. We’ll see.