https://youtu.be/JI0eYcwlfqk
You can put this one up there with the most unexpected scoring performances of the season. I don’t have handy the full list of most unexpected scoring performances, but my intuition tells me that Kelan Martin’s 25 points in 25 minutes, after having a previous season-high of just eleven points, is way up there on the list of bucketal anomalies. That would be a cool list to have, but it’s the kind of list that I would have needed to be compiling over the course of the season. So all I know is that Kelan Martin is on it and Kevin Porter Jr. is on it for scoring fifty.
This performance is made even more impressive by the fact that it’s been quite difficult for Pacers role-players to have good individual games this season. Sabonis, Brogdon, and LeVert (and Oladipo before him) take all the shots. Whenever a team has a trio of 20-point scorers, as the Pacers have, you know there are some players further down on the depth chart that are getting marginalized. Martin overcame that marginalization to lead all Pacers in scoring in this game, but you just know that he’ll score four points in nine minutes next game and the dream will be dead.
I think the main problem with Martin is that I don’t know how to pronounce Martin’s first name. I’m pretty good at figuring these things out so this is a major concern. His coaches probably call him the wrong name all the time. Tell me: is it KEELan, KeelAN, KELLan, KellAN, or something else?
To make the pronunciation clearer, Martin should alter the spelling of his name bit. The vowels should definitely be changed around. Replacing the A with an I is a good start. Kelin. It already makes more sense. But there’s more that could be done. There should definitely be a “V” somewhere in there, to stand for Victory, something that Martin is quite obviously capable of bringing to his team. But which consonant should be replaced? Velin sounds like the name of a pesticide, and Keliv looks like a typo. I guess we have to go with Kevin here.
Yeah, that looks good. Kevin Martin. It has a nice ring to it. Sounds like a name that is synonymous with NBA scoring success.