The ship has sailed on all the hype Doug McDermott had coming out of Creighton. It wasn’t an apocalyptic level of hype like, say, Jimmer Fredette, but it was pretty intense at times. It’s easy to forget with the passing of the years (this is McDermott’s sixth season already) how excited people were for this guy. There were a lot of people eagerly watching him early in his career, expecting greatness.
Those people are watching other, younger players now. No one, or hardly anyone, is sitting around waiting for McDermott to magically transform back into something resembling the player he was in college. So he just toils away in Indiana, putting up meager numbers for a team that no one really cares about. The fate of many a college superstar. Just change Indiana to Charlotte, or Minnesota, or any other unexciting market.
It’s better this way. In Indiana, no one notices how much of a disappointment his career turned out to be. He can just do his thing and cash those gigantic checks the Pacers are giving him for some reason. Did they think he would be better than this? Why would they think that?
I still like watching him play, as you can probably imagine. His jumper is still super wet, it will never not be super wet, it’s just a matter of it going in or not. Remember: jumper wetness and jumper success rate are not related at all.