Kentavious Caldwell-Pope knows what’s up. He’s not a dummy. He knows that if he wants to get an unreasonably large payday this off-season, he needs to play well enough to trick GM’s into thinking that he’s some kind of go-to scoring shooting guard. That’s why, when you look at his monthly shooting splits, you see that he’s averaging 18 PPG per game in April and 13 PPG per game in March after only average 5 PPG per game in October. There’s plenty of dumb front offices out there that will be wowed by those numbers even though KCP can only score “well” if he takes way too many shots.
It does seem that KCP has an easier time of it when LeBron isn’t around to be his usual superstar self. The past few games, it looks like the Lakers are having…what is it…fun? They might not have enough talent on the floor to win their games (ignoring this win against the Clippers), but they do have enough fun players on the court where it actually doesn’t hurt my eyeballs to watch them.
Note that I’m definitely not saying that KCP is a fun player. Even when he’s at his absolute hottest and all his shots are dropping, he’s not very much fun at all. I’ve disliked him since he entered the league, basically, and just because he gets to share the court with Alex Caruso and JaVale McGee (both of whom are “fun” players) doesn’t mean that I find KCP enjoyable to watch. Hopefully the fanbase of whatever team gets suckered into signing him feels differently about it.