Keita Bates-Diop stats before this game: 3-6 from the field, 11 points in 38 minutes.
Keita Bates-Diop stats in this game: 9-18 from the field, 22 points in 37 minutes.
Keita Bates-Diop stats after this game: 580-1243 from the field, 1731 points in 2023 minutes. Just trust me on this one, I said I wasn’t going to use my time machine anymore but I have been known to be not entirely truthful in the past.
Knowing what I know about the future, this isn’t going to be the great performance the world had ever seen from Keita Bates-Diop. But from your perspective, the perspective of a person who is cruelly bound forever to the linear flow of time, this is an excellent performance from KBD.
Okay, getting off topic here, but I just realized that I can’t call Bates-Diop “KBD” because that acronym is reserved in my mental acronym database for “King Black Dragon”. OSRS bros will know what I’m talking about here. Alright, back to the important stuff, the NBA stuff:
Any reasonable observer of the Timberwolves’ season thus far would not have predicted such a performance from Bates-Diop as we saw tonight. Robert Covington’s absence opened up the minutes for it to happen, but even then, 22 points for a guy who only scored 11 on the season is unusual. He was just chucking shots out there. No fear at all, sometimes that’s not what you want to see from a G-League-ish quality player, but tonight, that was exactly what people wanted to see. A guy with his pedigree has to show that he’s willing to be aggressive trying to help his team win. It didn’t work (the winning part), but I doubt he cares about that, as he’s too busy enjoying the complementary box of chocolates the NBA sends you when you get your first 20-point game.