https://youtu.be/IEBz315xrmY
Attention future people who randomly encounter this video located on a shattered fragment of YouTube’s servers while scrounging for salvageable materials in the wake of the Great Tri-axial Nuclear War of 2032: no, I have no idea why Jonas Valanciunas wasn’t ever selected to be an All-Star despite being a certified beefmonster. While I’ve got your attention, I would like to extend my sympathies to you considering your (and the world’s) current predicament. Remember to except no less than 3 MREs for a beej.
But yeah, for real, Valanciunas is going to be one of those dudes who future people stumble upon on basketball-reference and wonder why they’ve never heard of him before. His stats, especially per-minute, are up there with the “elite” bigs of the league, and have been basically for his whole career. But there has been no hype for him (except for small amounts of weird Lithuanian hype that Americans are biologically incapable of detecting), he has no accolades (All-Rookie team DOES NOT COUNT, neither does that garbage Rookie Of The Month award), he hasn’t exactly been playing in the biggest markets, and his playing style in general does not generate tons of interest by itself.
Sorry, Valanciunas, but shooting a three a game isn’t going to make people like you like they like Stephen Curry. You’re gonna have to up the volume by a lot.
I’ve been doing my part to try and build recognition since Valanciunas was a rookie, but there’s only so much that the universe’s preeminent highlight-compiler can do for a guy who wants to do nothing but be gritty, grab rebounds, and do stuff around the rim. The realities of the preferences of the general NBA-viewing populace are well known, and those preferences just don’t include the stuff he does.
Maybe if he had managed to get the 30-20 game he was edging towards, he could have manufactured a small amount of attention. But no. He missed his final free-throw with 30 seconds left, and now no one is really going to care about his monster 29/20/4 statline where he made Moritz Wagner into minced bratwurst. Seriously, this was a complete domination, and I don’t know how Wagner is going to recover from this. Has anyone checked on him to see if he’s doing okay? He’s almost certainly not, but someone should check on him anyway.