Apparently Fred “Vleetwood Mac” VanVleet is a good enough player where he doesn’t get to play in fourth quarter of blowouts. Congratulations on the promotion, man! It was not too long ago where he wouldn’t play EXCEPT in the fourth quarter of blowouts, so to be cheering from the bench while your team’s scrub unit enjoys the thirty-point lead you gave them has gotta feel pretty good.
It’s too bad that VanVleet didn’t play the last fifteen minutes of the game because I totally bet he could have gotten twenty assists. His chemistry with Pascal Siakam in the third quarter was borderline telepathic. Given the Knicks’ defensive woes and an entire quarter of game to work with, I’m guessing that VanVleet would have dimed Siakam at least eight more times and gotten to the magical twenty. Sadly, Coach Nurse wanted to give some pity minutes to this dude on the roster named “Jeremy Lin”, who seems to be a pretty big scrub who’s in dire need of some developmental playing time. Thanks to this Jeremy Lin guy, VanVleet enjoyed the fourth quarter from the bench even though he was having one of the best passing games of his life.
I never imagined that something this good could come out of Rockford, Illinois, the land of depression and decrepitude. So now there is exactly one thing on my personal list of Good Things about Rockford. Neat.