Gary Payton II has come in to the Wizards rotation straight from the minor leagues, going directly from being a premier G-League player to playing over 30 minutes per game for an actual real-life NBA team. The ‘Zards are battling some injuries right now, so the minutes were there for the taking (because you know Isaac Bonga isn’t going to be grabbing them), and Payton has been aggressive in stating his case to be in the NBA.
I wasn’t really a big fan of him on the Bucks (probably because his presence on the team felt more like a favor to Gary Payton Sr. from Jason Kidd than anything else), but he’s changing my mind in Washington. He’s had a 3×5 in all of his three games so far with his new team, including a pair of games with 6 steals, a pair of games with 5 dimes, a double-digit rebounding night, and double-digit scoring in every game.
Isaiah Thomas is fun and it’s good to see him be moderately successful after a tough season last year, but man, Payton probably impacts the game about 500 times more on the defensive end. On offense, yeah, he’s not that good (low-volume, anyway), but his defense even as a shortish guard has to be helping the Wizards a lot. Of course, both of his 6-steal games were against the Knicks, which makes me think that we should temper expectations until he performs consistently against teams that aren’t a total dumpster fire.