https://youtu.be/7rt4mrDpuGk
If Kendrick Nunn doesn’t watch out, he’s going to become one of those players who peaked in his rookie year (Geoff Petrie waves while cradling the tattered remains of his knee ligaments in his arms and sobbing). That’s a better outcome than peaking in your first ever game, like Michael Carter-Williams and Bruno Caboclo, but for sure the usual trajectory of an NBA player has at least some upward movement.
The signs were there last year that the Heat were not as enthused about him as it seemed to us outsiders that they should be. He had an amazing start to the year (if you include preseason, even better, remember that 40-burger? you know it was good because I remember it, and I remember almost nothing from preseason), wowing everybody with his undraftedness and his slick scoring outbursts. He even injected himself into ROTY of the Year discussions for a while. That’s how good he was. But by the time COVID came and canceled everything, he was starting to have some poor performances, and in The Bubbl, he was receiving DNPs in the regular season and playoffs. He eventually got dusted off to put in some decently productive (by DNP standards) minutes against the Lakers in the finals, but you could almost tangibly feel the reluctance for Spoelstra to put him in the game.
If the Heat really don’t want him, I have a trade proposal that they pretty much can’t refuse: Nunn for Thon Maker, straight up. Bucks get a salvageable bench scorer, and the Heat get Maker, who is still a future MVP candidate and will always be a future MVP candidate until Kevin Garnett dies. It’s not like I even want the Bucks to have Nunn; I just don’t want the Bucks to have Maker anymore.
Don’t even try to tell me that because Maker isn’t actually on the Bucks anymore, he cannot be traded by the Bucks. Screw you. You’re not the one who has had to deal with trauma of having Maker and his stone hands on your team.
I’ve kind of lost track of the injury situation in Miami (as well as with the rest of the league, hoo boy, might as well just get everyone together in a tightly-packed room and breathe heavily until everyone has COVID, it’ll be quicker that way), but apparently they’ve got enough of an injury situation where Nunn was forced to play 34 minutes each of the last two games. He had 18 points in the first one (a Heat victory), and now has followed that up with a “vintage” performance, 28 points and 5 nice dimes (also resulting in a Heat victory, hmmmmmm, maybe we can change the trade from Maker for Nunn to Maker for Butler).