https://youtu.be/_Bwmjbv3_Eg
Thanks to the kind folks at TSN (which is not the broadcast you get to see in this particular video, sorry), my statistical horizons have been broadened. They have bestowed upon us a premium factoid that is beyond my means to compute. And that factoid is this: the Raptors have had 10 different players score 30 points for them this season, which is the most ever for a single team. I’m in awe. How do you realize that that is a stat you should be looking up in the first place, and then how do you even figure something like that out? I brag about having Stathead all the time, but I’m a total pleb, a dirty and unwashed pleb, compared to the real pros who work for teams/networks.
At least when it comes to stats. When it comes to making primo video content accompanied by hard-hitting textual commentary, I wipe the floor with those bums.
I’m not going to list all 10 players here, because there are YouTube-proscribed limits on how long these video descriptions can be, but it’s a nice mix of players. Some normal names (Pascal Siakam, Fred VanVleet), some dudes who aren’t even on the team anymore (Norman Powell, Henry Ellenson), and some unexpected randoms from the end of the season (Paul Watson, Stanley Johnson). And now… Jalen Harris! Just some random dude they drafted at pick number 59 because the NBA regulations say you have to draft somebody. He looks like an alien. And he can drop 30 like it’s no big deal.
I will say, though, that the fact that Bruno Caboclo is not among the 10 30-point scoring Raptors is extremely infuriating to me. Just putting it out there. Ujiri, if you’re reading this. it’s NOT TOO LATE to sign Caboclo to a contract, put him in the game, and see what he can do, which would probably entail him scoring 30. It’s not too late. YOU COWARD.
Harris scoring 31 is fairly unexpected. Not as unexpected as Stanley Johnson dropping 35, which is totally bonkers, and not as unexpected as some of the other stuff happened tonight, but 31 is not a point total that a 59th overall pick would normally score. Certainly, I expect nothing close to that, ever, from Sam Merrill, the 60th pick. It’s just not happening.
But Harris does have something of a pedigree as a scorer in college. 22 PPG per game is a decent amount considering the messed-up brand of basketball that happens down in the amateur ranks. People talk a lot about how different the college game is compared to the pros, and they have a point in some respects, but how different is it really? The ball is the same, the hoop is the same. The point of the game is the same: get buckets. It’s not like he was balling in college and then he got to the NBA and they were like “yeah, you’re going to be playing ping-pong now”. He knows how to score. It’s just a matter of doing it against dudes who are slightly (or majorly) better at trying to stop him from scoring. But also maybe less motivated, now that the season is almost over.