This is, somewhat surprisingly, the only 20-plus point game of Sam Dekker’s illustrious career except for that random 30-point explosion he had back in January of 2017. He’s had his chances, 165 of them to be exact, to score a good amount of points, and this is only his second success. That 19-point game and those 17-point games (from the same year of his 30-burger), I count those as failures. Just a lesser degree of failure than all his 0’s and 2’s.
There was a brief moment of time where I was trying to talk myself into him after he got traded to the Bucks. I wasn’t having a ton of success convincing myself that Dekker would be a good fit for Milwaukee, but I was making progress. Then he got traded right along to the Wizards, and I didn’t have to worry about how adding yet another white American-born player would certainly run afoul of the NBA’s diversity quotas.
I don’t know how he fits with the Wizards. In fact, I don’t know how he fits with any team, because he’s a small forward who can’t shoot. He has a bunch of athleticism (which leads to somewhat unimpressive dunks considering what I saw him do to Enes Kanter all those years ago), but athleticism alone doesn’t mean much when everyone else is also athletic.
I was right in assuming that he feasted on opportunistic buckets set up by John Wall tonight. He did hit a few jumpers, I’ll give him credit. I’ll also give him credit for not immediately demanding a trade after seeing the toxic state of the Wizards locker room. Stay strong, Mr. Sheboygan.