https://youtu.be/HTC2Vaol-rc
OFFICIAL DTB DISCLAIMER: Darius Bazley needed 21 shots to score his 21 points in this game. Any time the amount of field goals attempted is equal to or greater than the amount of points scored, you know you’re looking at an inefficient scoring performance, and the numbers bear this out: Bazley was 7-of-21 from the field. I call this the “Jordan Crawford Special” because Jordan Crawford spent most of his six-year NBA career doing exactly this and not seeing a problem with it.
This video still represents an entertaining collection of buckets from The Bazed God, but if nobody told you the backstory, you would watch this video and assume that Bazley had played a good game. That is the terrifying power of highlight videos. It’s like when somebody watches a highlight video of some player hitting five threes, and they comment that “all of them were straight swishes”. Well, duh. All you’re seeing is the makes. If you had to watch all the misses as well, you wouldn’t be asserting that all of them were “straight swishes”. In fact, you might turn on that player for their lack of shooting accuracy. Do I become a peddler of falsehoods every time I upload a new video to my channel? Sadly, yes.
All that said, Bazley is just a developing second-year player on a team that lacks upper-echelon scoring talent, so I don’t blame him too much for this rather brickerific display of shooting. In fact, it’s encouraging that he’s displaying a multi-faceted scoring arsenal, even if those facets aren’t as polished as one might hope. Add in the fact that he physically resembles Russell Westbrook, and I predict good things for his career in OKC. Not great things, but at least good things. Sometimes.