Lost in the folderol (mostly consisting of Kevin Calabro tonelessly reciting a list of Blazers players who got triple-doubles off the bench) surrounding Evan Turner and his stat-padded statisticals, was that Zach Collins who is the future of the franchise scored a career-high 18 points. Normally, when a player hits the last shot to get them over the threshold into uncharted scoring territory, that’s when the commentators jump in and say excitedly “and with that basket, a new career high for $playerName”. But no. I guess Turner pulling a Westbrook (or should I say “Statpadbrook”) is more important than Collins coming only one bucket away from a 20-burger.
I don’t know if you noticed yet, but Jusuf Nurkic is injured and not playing. Something about his leg? I’m not sure of the details. Definitely a hit to the Blazers playoff hopes, but from my point of view, it’s all good. His injury means three things: more minutes for Enes Kanter, more minutes for Meyers Leonard, and more minutes for Zach Collins. All four of those dudes share a certain characteristic that is very appealing for certain viewers of my channel, but Nurkic was hogging the minutes, marginalizing the other three. Now we get a higher volume of highlight videos of these appealing players.
Collins had some nice games at the start of the season, leading me to get hyped (6 blocks in the season opener on national TV was LIIIIIIIT), but he still looks way too skinny to be an impact NBA player (“impact” in the sense that one impact would cause him to shatter into a million pieces). Offseason plan for him: eat some brownies prepared with DTB’s special formulation. Which is to replace the flour with whey protein. It may sound disgusting, and it is, and the resultant batter doesn’t really form “brownies” in the traditional sense, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices to make gains.