My first thought when I saw that Kelly Oubre had 26 points was “Man, ‘Zards fans are gonna be pissed that Oubre got traded for being bumsauce and then it turned out he was capable of games like this the entire time.” And that thought made me happy because the concept of an entire fanbase languishing in misery over a botched personnel decision is very appealing to me. I love seeing fanbases melt down over things like this.
However, the reality of the situation doesn’t match my idealized conception of the situation. This is Oubre’s career-high, but only on a technicality, because he also scored 26 points in a game last season when he was still with the ‘Zards. Not only that, but Oubre scored more PPG in his games with the ‘Zards this season than he has in his games with the Suns. So, by that extremely simplistic measure, Oubre isn’t even playing that much better with Phoenix.
The moral of the story is that ‘Zards fans can rest easy this season knowing that Brooks wasn’t somehow egregiously misusing Oubre and him going to another team wasn’t the magical key to unlock his inner beast (the Bucks did this with Tobias Harris and I’m still mad as hell about it). However, that doesn’t preclude Oubre from becoming a beast in upcoming seasons, so this trade still has the potential to embarrass the ‘Zards organization. I look forward to it.