Iman Shumpert has already matched his “2017-18 DTB Videos” total from last year with this unexpected performance. “Unexpected” is probably putting it lightly, at least for me; I really thought we’d seen the last of him doing anything of note in the NBA. He played one game in the 2018 part of last season. Just one. Forgive me for thinking that that meant the end of his flat-topped NBA career.
But the Kings traded for him, maybe not “for” him but you get the idea, and he’s getting paid 11 million, and they didn’t want to flush that all down the toilet, so here we are. In fact, they more than didn’t want to flush that all down the toilet, they wanted a legitimate return on their investment, so they started him tonight.
Normally I would accuse them of tanking because of that decision, but I don’t think that they’re tanking quite yet, and it’s possible they knew something we didn’t. Because Shumpert scored 26 points, 26 frickin’ points, and toppled a fragile OKC squad. His 16 point first quarter had me investigating the source code of my proprietary boxscore program for bugs, but no bugs were to be found. He simply went out there, shot a bunch of shots, and had them go in.
And, yes, this takes the early lead for the “Most Unexpected Performance 2018-19” award. How could it not? This guy was done. Everyone agreed on that. Except for him.