When I saw that Avery Bradley has sixteen points in the first quarter of this game, my response was not one of hypeitude. Instead, I grimaced and braced myself for a thirty-burger from Bradley that would bring considerable amounts of joy and cockiness to Lakers fans who don’t require significant amounts of either of those things at the moment. I can just see the comments now: “Avery Bradley is a key piece of this championship squad.” “We got shooters bitchez.” “with AB on the bench giannas is comin to la book it”.
However, things didn’t exactly pan out in real life as they did in my imagination. Bradley did not score in the second quarter, so he ended the half with sixteen. Then, he hit a single three-pointer less than a minute into the third quarter, and that was it. He was done scoring. He was on the court for a few more minutes after his final shot, but the Lakers were handling the Kings easily, so he got to spend the last eighteen minutes of the game watching from the bench. He could have easily gotten the dreaded thirty-burger if he had been allowed to run free in the fourth, but no such luck.
So this is a video which is the ultimate example of wasted highlight potential. Sixteen first-quarter points could have been the start of something truly entertaining that Lakers fans would flock to. Instead, it’s just a ho-hum scoring performance from a guy who could probably have done more.