Trevor Ariza has always been known as a contract year guy who tricks teams into thinking that the way he plays during contract years is the way he’ll play all the time if you just give him enough money. This reputation, which is definitely not a secret if I know about it, didn’t prevent the Kings from paying him twelve million dollars this year and next. And guess what? They’re not getting the fourteen PPG per game that Ariza was giving the Wizards for the second half of last season.
Ariza’s gotten his money, probably the last big paycheck of his career, and he seems content to just run up and down the court without really doing anything. Coming off the bench for the first time in at least half a decade, he’s the furthest thing you can think of from being a “bench scorer”, since he’s only taking five shots per game. Never before in his career has his rate of attempting shots been so low.
I would normally go in on Ariza for phoning it in right after getting a nice payday from a team that legitimately wants him to be a contributor, but I can’t blame him for…what is it the kids say these days? “Getting the bag”? He got the bag for not one but two years, and there’s nothing the Kings can do about it now. Besides, the Kings should have known this would happen. Literally every indicator available to them indicated that Ariza would do this to them. He’s done it before, and now he’s older with even less internal drive to be good at basketball. Come on Vlade.