Robin Lopez was the king of hook shots last year. If you haven’t watched my Robin Lopez Hookilation from last season, you should stop reading right here and go watch it. I’ll even give you a link that I promise isn’t a Rickroll: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-QaDLfogNM . I’ll also give you a link that is definitely a Rickroll so you know for sure that the first one isn’t: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
But that was last year and this is this year. This year, we’re a third of the way through the season and Lopez has only had three games in double-figure scoring. Even more jarring, he’s all the way down in seventh place on the hook shot leaderboards. Tristan Thompson is doubling him up, 46 to 22, even though Lopez is shooting the highest percentage on those shots out of all players who are vying for the title of “NBA Hook Shot King”.
So, not only are Lopez’s hook shot totals down, but his overall totals in everything else are down too. The chances of me making another hookilation are remote unless he starts cutting meaningfully into his brothers minutes, or they start playing Brook at PF to allow them to share the court. I knew that Hook Shot Nirvana couldn’t last forever, but I wish it lasted longer than it did.