I may be the only one who remembers, but Warriors fans used to defend this guy SO HARD. They’ll deny it, if you can find any who were around while he was with them, but it’s so true. If you tried to call him a bust (it wasn’t me doing the name-calling, this was before I started doing these highlights with their inflammatory descriptions), they’d come out of the woodwork grasping printed-out plus-minus stats and claim that he was actually really good. Maybe they were right, even, since I’m looking at his on-off stats right now and they’re pretty damn good for his first two seasons with the Warriors and the Bucks.
But the truth of the matter was, he was the 6th overall pick and wasn’t putting up any stats at all. Is it a coincidence that the season after he was traded was the season the Warriors started their ascent into the dynasty they’ve become? Stephen Curry might have had something to do with that also, and maybe there were some other factors.
I think it’s safe to call him a bust now. Even if he has managed 7 seasons in the NBA, his total career production is so far below what you would except from a player picked where he was that the bust label is unavoidable. I will say that he has a very good Udoh Internet Defense Force (UIDF), because I remember seeing some fawning articles about what he was doing in Turkey, about his book clubs and crap, and I was half convinced that he’d come back to the NBA and be something of an impact player.
Jokes on me, because he still looks like he can barely move. He has put up good per36 stats this year, I’ll give him that. The Jazz barely play him, though, and that means something, because if there’s any team where his lack of offense and stout defense would be used, it’s the Jazz. I hope you enjoy these season-finale (when else would he put up these stats?) highlight of him. 14 points, 13 rebounds, 5 assists, 4 blocks, it was all great, but I’ll be over here trying to forget that the Udoh era of the Bucks ever happened.