There is nothing that I love more, and I mean NOTHING, than unearthing a never-before-seen scrub/role-player/something-in-between and showcasing him for the first time. The guys on two-way contracts are the best for this. Now, for Yuta Watanabe, the “never-before-seen” part isn’t exactly true, because this guy has a whole native country’s worth of followers just waiting for him to bust out, not to mention a whole bunch of Americans as well. But I haven’t seen much of him, and I’m hyped as heck. So hyped that I uploaded this video before I got the description written for the previous vid (sorry Caboclo fans I hope it was worth the wait).
This is it. This is Watanabe’s breakout game. It may not seem like much, because 10 points just straight up ISN’T that much, but for him, it’s a monster night. This isn’t the G-League. This is the NBA, where there are NBA defenders trying to stop you from scoring NBA points. My rough approximation is every NBA point is the equivalent of 10 G-League points. Which means that, in the G-League, this would be a performance for the ages, 100 points. Think about that when you say that 10 points is not worth a highlight video.
In the end, this isn’t the greatest highlight video ever made. It would’ve been better had the Grizzlies’ broadcast team not botched the replay of his first bucket, rendering it unusable. If you really want a replay, use the slowdown setting that YouTube has to set the video at half speed, then rewatch the clip. It’s not a real replay since the camera angle would be the same, but it would be something.