Tonight, Gary Payton II made his re-debut for the Wizards after a 3-game NBA stint last year and put together one of the sickest scrublines (that’s a portmanteau of “scrub” and “statline” if you didn’t get it) of the season. 10 points, 11 rebounds, 5 assists, 6 steals, it’s all right there in the title so I didn’t really need to say it again, but I wanted to emphasize the mindblowing nature of those stats through repetition.
At first glance, Payton doesn’t seem like a very good fit for the ‘Zards. This is a team that likes to play offense, with defense being very low on the list of priorities, lower even than marginal list items like “getting the cute cheerleader’s phone number” and “reminding the rookies that the cheerleader named Denise has a wide variety of STDs”. And Payton, well, he’s the son of one of the great PG defenders ever, so you know what his calling card is going to be.
With Isaiah Thomas suspended for basically reenacting Malice in the Palace, the ‘Zards decided now would be a good time to call up a replacement. They must have figured that they have enough offense to be getting on with, so they snagged Payton from the G-League and immediately played him 32 minutes.
We saw something similar from him last year, where he played the entire fourth quarter (and no other minutes) in a game against the Cavaliers, leading a furious (but futile, in the end) comeback with 11 points, 4 assists, and 3 steals. And then he played one more game, and was done with the NBA for that year. But this, this is way sicker than that. I know it’s against the Knicks, but damn. Look at that statline in the title.