At some point last season, Steven Adams ended up on my exclusion list. I know it was sometime in the middle of the season because the written exclusion list doesn’t include his name (I was too lazy to make updates to it as the season went along). Since I have no written record of my decision, it’s hard to say what my rationale was. That’s not to say that I suspect my rationale of being flimsy. My rationales are never flimsy. My rationales are rock-solid. Always. But I just don’t know what that rationale was. All I know was that it was an informed decision that took into account all factors and variables.
Whatever my reasoning was, it doesn’t apply this season. Adams has seen a minutes reduction this year and also seems to be suffering slightly from the departure of one Chucksell Statpadbrook. Sure, Adams is getting hella rebounds because nobody on the team has any desire to statpad rebounds, but there’s also the problem that nobody’s around to statpad assists to Adams. Except Chris Paul. Somebody call CP3 up and tell him to start statpadding assists to Adams.
The 22 points that Adams scored in this game represents a season-high by far. His next-best game was thirteen points. Even if I did want to leave Adams on the exclusion list (and I kinda do, because every player that I put on that list will end up saving me some time and effort in the end), I couldn’t justify it at this point. I wouldn’t say that he’s been “trash”, or even “trash-adjacent”, but his upward trajectory hasn’t continued. Maybe you could even call it a “trashjectory”. Heh. That was pretty good, right?