It took Henry “Hellenson” Ellenson almost the entire season last year to accomplish what he did in one game tonight. Is this an incidence of the fabled “crappy rookie improves coming into his second campaign”? It’s too early to tell, but all indicator are pointing towards “it’s too early to tell”.
This performance by Ellenson is a continuation of what he was doing in Summer League. Normally what dudes do in Summer League is constrained to that arena in Las Vegas (or, in this particular case, the Magic’s sunlit practice facility). Dudes go off there all the time and then come to the league and do nothing, if they even make the league. Ellenson sure looked confident down there, and apparently a small shred of that confidence has perservered all the way to the start of the actual season where the games actually mater.
I would not be surprised if Ellenson doesn’t really build on this; rotations at the start of the year are always funky, and he has a reputation of being an absolutely unbelievably bad defender. But even if he withers away ont he bench for the rest of the year, at least we can say that we saw him when he had the mystical attribute called “confidence”.