Austin Rivers scored all 19 of his points tonight before another Rockets bench player even scored one. Shout out to Tyson Chandler for getting a single bucket at the end of the third quarter. It turns out that from the rest of the bench, Chris Clemons can only score in garbage time, Gary Clark can’t score at all ever, and Thabo Sefolosha is too busy getting police-brutalitied to score (seriously did everyone just forget about that whole situation?????).
Rivers has a lot of flaws, but he can at least score. It’s not very high-volume scoring, and it’s not very efficient scoring, but he is capable of putting the ball in the hole in a variety of ways. On the Rockets, just like for everyone else, the main way is by standing behind the arc and shooting it. But he still has some of those dribble moves that made him so hyped in high school (I will never forget how hyped I was watching those vids, that was so long ago…), so he can do that too if his defender is slow/bad enough.
Right now I’m thinking about how sweet it would’ve been if, instead of Rivers scoring 19 points, those shots and makes went to James Harden instead. That’s how it should be, honestly, no one besides Harden has earned the right to even touch, much less shoot, the ball. If Rivers’ selfishly-scored 19 points were scored by Harden, he’d almost have 70, and probably would’ve went for it hard since he would’ve been so close. Actually if you add his dunk that somehow didn’t count, that’s 71 right there.
Rivers basically robbed us of a 70-burger by Harden, is what I’m saying here. Get out your pitchforks everyone, I’m getting together a mob and we’re gonna maraud the HECK out of the countryside.