True NBA role-player historians will remember the unlikely hero for the Jazz in last year’s series against the Rockets: Royce O’Neale, who scored 17 points on two seperate occasions, stepping up and leading his team on offense in game 3 while everyone else sucked, and again in game 5, again taking a leading role with the help of Donovan Mitchell (okay) and Alec Burks (what happened to him).
History, as they say, repeats itself, because once again O’Neale is attempting to drag his unwilling team to the promised land against James Harden and his ragtag group of friends. He has again scored 17 points, is again the leading scorer on his team, and again should shave off that gnarly beard because he’s reminding me way too much of John Salmons.
It goes without saying that having O’Neale be your primary scoring option is not a winning formula. He’s a nice player, sort of a diamond-in-the-rough kind of guy since he was undrafted, but that’s all he is. Just a guy. The Jazz seem to have a lot of those kind of players; have they thought about offering Khris Middleton a max contract during the offseason? Because if they are thinking about it, hands off. Khash Money Deuces is mine and no one is touching him.