It had been a while since we had a “vintage” Devonte’ Graham performance. The criteria for such a performance are simple: tons of threes, tons of assists, and not much else.
You may dispute the designation of “vintage” on a particular Graham performance on the grounds that he has only been in the league for two seasons. That’s fair. But I’m going to keep using the term with his performances, because you aren’t my mother and you can’t tell me what to do.
Unless you are my mother, in which case, please stop finding my secret male modeling Instagram accounts where I pose, scantily clad, in the pursuit of likes. Those pictures are not meant for your eyes.
And I actually just looked it up, and I think Graham has only had one performance prior to tonight that fits my criteria in the first place: his 33 and 9 game where he hit 10 threes. Every other game either doesn’t have enough assists, doesn’t have enough threes, or has too much other stuff (rebounds, two-pointers, etc.). I guess I didn’t realize how low-volume his three-point makes have been recently; I just got used to him hitting 6 a game, I guess.
It’s kind of sad that his night ended with a totally messed up play to try and get a game-tying three, with him just running into the corner, finding no one to pass it to, and having to chuck an easily-blocked triple as time expired. Luckily, you don’t have to see that (it doesn’t really count as a “highlight”), and if you don’t read this paragraph, you don’t even have to know that it happened at all.