Fred “Vleetwood Mac” VanVleet has alternately drawn the ire and the support of Raptors fans. When he’s playing well, and especially when Lowry is playing poorly, there are calls for him to get more minutes. When he’s playing badly and chucking up bricks, there are calls for him to be removed from the rotation and replaced entirely with Delon Wright.
Things might change after this game, and not only because Wright got traded today and is no longer a threat to steal anybody’s minutes on the Raptors. Scoring thirty points in the NBA is a meaningful line to cross for several reasons.
First of all, it grants one access to the Hall of the Thirty-Point Scorers, which is a sort of heavenly realm/alternate dimension type thing where you just walk around in the clouds and feel incredible peace of mind. Also Carlos Delfino is there to tell you how he once scored thirty points two games in a row.
Secondly, you become known in NBA circles as “the guy who scored thirty points”. I know this because I am part of some NBA circles myself, and I call anybody who has ever scored thirty points by this title. Sometimes people are confused about which thirty-point guy I’m referring to, but it always makes sense to me. Those people just suffer from the curse of idiotism.
Thirdly, thirty points can have a real effect on how I evaluate you for highlight video suitability going forward. Point totals that were acceptable for highlightage become unacceptable because I know that the player is capable of more.
Fourthly, they give you a discount at Perkins if you’ve scored thirty points in a game at any level of organized basketball, from pee-wee leagues to high school to AAU to the YMCA to the G-League to the Iran League to the NBA. I don’t have first-hand experience with this, but you can totally get a chicken fried steak for eight bucks using the discount. It’s likely that VanVleet scored thirty in high school, but maybe nobody thought to tell him about the discount then.