https://youtu.be/vrpkIu_jIVA
“He’s not one of those guys that’s gonna beat you with skill” says the Pelicans commentator (the annoying one, not Joel Meyers), not knowing that his team is about to be embarrassed by the not-so-skill-less Jarred Vanderbilt. It’s almost cinematic, that the first audio clip in this video so perfectly sets up the dominance on display in the rest of it.
Is there a category in The Oscars for NBA highlights? If there is, I humbly submit this for consideration. If there isn’t, then I’m going to make my OWN awards ceremony, and I’m going to invite all the big names in highlights, and there’s going to be red carpets, beautiful females, swag bags filled with only the fanciest knick-knacks, gold-plated statuettes, and no one’s going to win any awards but me. Whichever random corporate stooge that’s running House of Highlights these days is going to be so embarrassed as a broadly-grinning DownToBuck walks up to claim yet another award, this time in the category “best video depicting a bigman getting a triple-double on the back of a bunch of worthless handoff assists” with his classic upload of “Steven Adams Triple Double 10 Pts/11 Rebs/10 Asts Full Highlights (1/6/2020)”.
We got off topic here a little bit. Back to the matter at hand: Vanderbilt totally dominating the Pelicans because no one wanted to put a body on him. Mr. Pelicans Commentator was actually right about this one: Vanderbilt ISN’T going to beat you with skill. But why should he need to, when all he needs to do is hang around the rim to get easy layups and dunks? Screw it, that’s a type of skill. Knowing where to put your body to maximize your effectiveness is totally a skill. Not as fancy of a skill as being able to shoot a jumper or dribble more than twice in a row without losing the ball, but a skill nonetheless. And it’s the skill Vanderbilt has.
I’m not even going to diss Zion Williamson for his performance here. Vanderbilt is just a bad matchup for him, just like anyone over 6’7″ who has working arms and legs is a bad matchup for him. Oh, wait, sorry, was that a diss? My bad.