For a long time, I thought that Tyler Zeller was better than Cody Zeller. That time might still be going on actually, despite the fact that Tyler isn’t even in the league anymore (I thought for sure he would stick with Denver after training camp) and Cody is still playing a major role for a team fighting for a playoff spot in the tough East. Somehow Tyler convinced me that he possessed a complete offensive game, accompanied by passable defense. He looked good for the Bucks, so good that I wished at the time that we kept him over whoever we kept instead. And now he’s gone. Not even playing in Europe.
So I was wrong about which of those two Zeller brothers was better, but I remain right over the fact that Luke Zeller is way, way worse than either of them. Luke would have to do a heck of a lot at this point to prove me wrong on that point.
What you see here is the reason Cody is still in the league: he can score 19 points against an NBA team WHILE playing for an NBA team. They may be the least exciting 19 points ever (actually, that’s not true, one of his shots was pretty nice), but the NBA does not care about the excitingness of your points. They care that the points get scored, and if that’s by standing flatfooted underneath the basket and laying it in instead of dunking it, that’s fine by them.