I have to give a lot of credit to Robin Lopez for refining his footwork and turning into an unstoppable spinning hook shot machine these last few weeks. He’s just nailing that pivot foot to the floor, doing a couple ballerina twirls (I believe the technical term is “pirouette”), and throwing that thing in the hoop with either hand. It’s beautiful.
But some of the credit for his unorthodox success comes from a different source: his gnarly facial hair. You think defenders, when he starts spinning, want to risk getting hit in the face with that thing? No way. That beard looks like it houses several different communicable diseases, including but not limited to:
-Tuberculosis
-Ebola
-Hep A
-Hep B
-Hep Z
-Captain Trips
Like, I don’t even want one of those diseases, much less all 6. So while it’s cool that Lopez is bringing back a forgotten aspect of offensive basketball, known that he’s not receiving defenders’ full attention. Or he is, but not in the usual way.