It’s taken until his third season, but we are finally starting to see some “Summer League” Aaron Gordon. You know what I’m talking about. The three-point shooting, perimeter oriented, confident player that he was every summer, playing against lesser players. In the regular season, when the quality of his competition ramped up, he was the kind of player that flashed (and splashed) his jumper only rarely.
Note how I said “some”. Most of the time, Gordon is more careful with his shot selection than he was tonight, or when he scored 33 against the Clippers. Most of the time, he doesn’t chuck contested threes or pull-up jumpers after fancy dribble moves. Most of the time, he takes some jumpers and then stops when they don’t go down.
Like his 33-point game, this performance is pretty much the opposite of how Gordon played his first two years in the NBA. He dunks it once this video, and the rest is all jumpers and post moves. As Zaza Pachulia said, “NOTHING EASY! NOTHING EASY!”. He said some more stuff also, but I don’t think game sevens are relevant to the Magic just yet.