https://youtu.be/C_oaPY58Pew
Tonight’s fun experiment for the Thunder: Point-Pokusevski! That is, having Alexsej Pokusevski, who is extremely tall/raw but has some limited ball-handling/distributing capabilities, play the “point guard” position for the Thunder. Or, at least, have him do the bulk of the ball-handling. Technically, I think he started at shooting guard.
Remember, a big turning in point in Giannis’ Antetokounmpo’s career was the introduction of “Point-Giannis”, which didn’t actually work very well (like this attempt, spoiler alert) or result in any wins (not like this attempt, again, spoiler alert). He went from being an off-ball complementary piece to a offensive focal point, and never gave up that status.
So how did Point-Pokusevski work in this game? I already spoilered you a bit, but if we’re talking pure point-guardage here, it didn’t go super well. Only 2 assists for Pokusevski, compared with 7 turnovers. Maybe he’s the type of guy who does better distributing the ball as a, say, Nikola Jokic type? Not as a Chris Paul type? Yeah, let’s go with that. Thunder coaches, you guys need to spend a lot of time with this dude during the offseason watching Jokic clips. And also classic American comedy films like Anchorman, Superbad, and Freddie Got Fingered. Because you just know Pokusevski is lagging in his peers when it comes to understanding American culture.
But the focus on his assists and his turnovers and their ratio seems kind of misplaced when he went out there and scored a FRICKIN’ career-high of 29 points in a MUST-WIN game for the Thunder.
Okay, it wasn’t really must-win. Unlike most of the other 30 teams playing tonight, the Thunder had nothing to play for except seeing if they could wring some gnarly scoring performances out of their young talent. And that’s what happened: points were wrung out of the lanky corpse of Pokusevski, as well as Moses Brown (24) and Josh Hall (25). This is exactly the kind of thing that Thunder fans need to get them through a long offseason, memories of Pokusevski dropping tons of smooth jumpers all over the Clippers. That’s what the last game of the regular season is all about, giving the fans enough to work with so that they don’t die over the offseason.
Relatedly, if the Thunder want to make sure Pokusevski doesn’t die over the offseason, they need to remind him to eat food sometimes. Text him, call him, kidnap him and take him to the practice facility and hook him up with some IV drips, whatever you need to do. He’s too valuable a prospect to have him accidentally die because he forgot to consume nutrients.
With this performance, Pokusevski has increased his field goal percentage on the season to a whopping 34 percent, is one of the worst marks in modern NBA history among players who played at least 1000 minutes, but not THE worst. Jordan Poole was worse last year, Draymond Green was worse his rookie season, Rashad Vaughn barely cracked 30 percent (that guy could still be good, DAMMIT). And the worst of all, Nikoloz Tskitishviki, coming in at 29 percent in the 2002-03 season, a dude who actually has a lot of comps with Pokusevski. Not to freak Thunder fans out or anything.