Games happening right around the trade-deadline are second only two end-of-year scrubfests in terms of entertainment value. Lots of players get moved around, the players that get traded are obviously gone and the players traded for haven’t passed the physicals or whatever, so teams are forced into constricted lineups featuring players who don’t normally get to play too much. Who can ever forget Angel Delgado’s monster 2-point performance at around this time last year?
The Heat have recently executed a trade (and by the time you’re seeing this, they might have executed more trades). It wasn’t gigantic, but it was a trade. And I think they might have more things up their sleeve because where even was James Johnson? What about Dion Waiters? They weren’t playing, because the Heat didn’t want to injure them so that they wouldn’t be able to trade them for… who knows? I’ve lost track of all the trade rumors.
Enter Derrick Jones Jr., actually, enter Gabe Vincent first, because I barely even know who that is but he scored 9 points, points 1 through 9 of his presumably illustrious career. I want to shout him out because he won’t get a vid and perhaps never will get a vid. Gabe Vincent, you rock.
Okay, back to DJJ. He got a lot of opportunities tonight that wouldn’t otherwise be given to him, and he took full advantage. It wasn’t just that the Heat were undermanned. It was that the Heat knew that they were on national TV, knew that he was going to be in the dunk contest, and knew that in order to get people hyped that he had to score tons of points and dunk it tons of times. That last one might’ve been a direct order from Adam Silver himself: get Derrick Jones Jr. a new career-high OR ELSE.
I will say, though, that if he’s going to have a wide-open breakaway dunk, he needs to do something cooler than just jump real high and cock it back real far. Not even a windmill? I get that you want to be sure of the two points, but think of the fans.