I had already seen the dominance that Robin Lopez had put on Deandre Ayton in this game. If you don’t feel like watching the highlight video of the performance, I have a one word summary for you: “hooks”. But even while knowing and cherishing that dominance, I knew that Ayton had 25 points in this game, outscoring Lopez. Perhaps, I thought, the dominance that Ayton put on Lopez was even greater than the dominance he received.
Well, now the video is done, I’ve seen and considered both sides of the coin, and the truth is, Ayton scored a lot of points, but it wasn’t dominating in the same way that Lopez was. For one thing, only a few of his buckets were on Lopez, and none of them were of the “crazy sweeping hook post move” variety, which is how Lopez executed the majority of the domination. For another thing, his team lost the game. And for a third thing, as if you needed more than those two rock-solid things I already mentioned, is that I don’t have a third thing. It just seemed like I needed two when I started the sentence, but when I got to halfway through the sentence I realized I didn’t.
Ayton also had some other stats besides his scoring, three each of blocks, steals, and assists. So that’s cool. I have a name for a special achievement called a “scrub by five”, which is 2 of every major boxscore category. This is one more than that, and it also wasn’t performed by a scrub, so I need a new name for it. How about “The Josh Smith”? That sounds cool. Everyone loved to hate on that dude (including me when I drafted him way too high the one time I played fantasy basketball), but he was a sweet player in his own way. Yeah. Ayton just pulled a Josh Smith.