Now doesn’t seem like the right time to advance my theory that Victor Oladipo was maybe a little bit overrated. Too soon after the injury? It’s like criticizing a dead dude (just a normal dude, not someone famous for being garbage); no matter how much of a jerkoff he was in life, in death he becomes an untouchable saint for all eternity and people will be mightily offended if you try to bring up his past transgressions. Not the same scenario exactly, because Oladipo isn’t dead (that we know of; has anyone seen him after his surgery?), but the same idea. So I’ll wait until a few years from now to really get into the meat of my theory.
After a bit of a transition period, the Pacers are back to winning games without Oladipo. Players are stepping up. Myles Turner has stepped up, Cory Joseph almost got a triple-double, and Bojan Bogdanovic just can’t stop getting buckets. Tyreke Evans still sucks, but you can’t have everyone step up all at the same time otherwise you end up with serious chemistry problems, so that’s fine. He can just keep sucking and I’ll just keep him on my exclusion list because I thought he was gonna keep up his play from last year in Memphis.
Bogdanovic is stepping up in a way that I thought maybe he wouldn’t: by making a lot of non-three buckets. The easiest way, in my imagination, for him to step up was by mercilessly chucking threes like he was still shooting 50 percent on them. But no! He’s upped his volume from three a little bit, corresponding with upping his volume from other places a little bit.
It’s only a matter of time before he matches or surpasses that 44-point game he had with the Nets. His confidence is growing by the game, and there’s enough touches for him to do it. Give it another month. I’ll be there with the highlights when it happens.