Bad news for Hornets fans: Nicolas Batum is still getting paid 75 million over the next three years (this year included, and the last year is a player option but why the heck wouldn’t he take it), and he seems to have decided that he doesn’t want to score the ball anymore.
Good news for Hornets fans: your franchise branding is still the sickest in the league.
Someone who watches more Hornets games than me (which is approximately half of Hornets fans and Zach Lowe) needs to let me know why Batum isn’t shooting anymore. Does he not realize that the whole point of basketball is baskets? It’s not called “intangibleball”. Intangibles are nice, passing is nice, savvy all-around play is nice, but buckets are the nicest of all, and Batum would rather pretend he doesn’t exist on offense.
Something apparently rare happened here against the Wizards: he raised his hands in the air as if to call for the ball so he could shoot it. It was so rare that the commentators made a point of mentioning it. I guess him normally preferring not to receive the ball is better than clapping desperately and then sulking when it doesn’t come to him (ancient video of Andrew Bynum yelling at Sasha Vujacic goes here).