New rule: when an NBA player scores more than 16 points in a first quarter and doesn’t end up with 40 for the game, they get sent back down to the G-League immediately at the conclusion of the game. While they’re there, they’re getting real G-League checks, barely any money at all, while the money they’re missing out on gets donated to Adam Silver’s baldness-research institute. And they don’t get to come back until they score 100 points in a G-League game. As punishment for pretending they were going to have a big scoring game and then not even doing it.
Everybody wins. The NBA gets to rid themselves of players who don’t want to score until they show that they really do, and the G-League gets a bunch of high-powered talent trying to chuck their way to 100 points. What better way to boost attendance at a random G-League game than by being able to advertise that Kyle Kuzma is there and he’s going to be taking literally every shot for his team the entire 48 minutes? And that he’s going to be doing the same for the foreseeable future? I’d buy a plane ticket to LA right now to see that.
Kuzma had 20 points in the first quarter against the Rockets. His next three quarters: 4, 6, and 2. And the overtime: 0. Unacceptable. If the NBA doesn’t want to implement my suggestion (but I think they will, Silver really wants more funding for his baldness research), they need to find another way to punish players who tease us like this. The NBA is increasingly based on outstanding individual performances; if there is a player who doesn’t want to score 40, they can find players who do.