Again, I owe an apology to Spurs fans. They were all telling me (and everybody else) that Keldon Johnson was the REAL up-and-coming stud on their roster. Not Dejounte Murray, not Derrick White, not Jakob Poeltl, not Lonnie Walker (okay maybe it is still Walker too), definitely not Chimezie Metu, but Keldon Johnson. I didn’t believe them. And now I’m the one looking like a dumdum because he had three, count ’em, THREE twenty-point games in The Bubb.
But this apology has a caveat: I’m the one who’s supposed to be skeptical here, since I’m the one trying to present an unbiased look at the entire NBA through my highlight videos. Fanbases make outrageous claims all the time, and if I took those claims at face value, I would be left thinking that every rookie is an All-Star in the making, that every second-year player is poised to score 20 PPG next season, and that a collection of five random G-League-level players is somehow supposed to morph a garbage team into a playoff team in one short off-season.
My assumption was that Spurs fans were addled by their playoff streak imminently coming to an end. I assumed that they were Stockholm Syndromed by the continued presence of LaMarcus Aldridge. With every loss their team suffered, I thought, their grip on reality loosened until it was fully relinquished. A fanbase in such a condition of mental deterioration would naturally latch on to unknowns like Keldon Johnson in order to provide some shred of hope.
I still think Spurs fans are a bit loopy. But they were right about Keldon Johnson.