One of the storylines I don’t think I’ve seen anyone bring up yet is Bismack Biyombo’s utterly unexpected transformation into a competent scorer. When he started his career, he was one of the lowest scorers, per minute, in the league. In the 2012-13 season, he scored 6 points per 36, a ridiculously low amount. It got a little better after that, but never all that much better. He clearly preferred grabbing rebounds over getting buckets.
That has changed this year. He’s scoring around 18 points per 36, by FAR a career high. That number may be a little abstract, so to put in perspective: that’s about as many points as known bucket-getter T.J. Warren is scoring per minute. Nikola Jokic is only a little bit above him. Right now, we can say without exaggeration or hyperbole that Biyombo is a comparable scorer to Jokic. I am wondering if somehow my corporeal form accidentally slipped into alternate universe (now that you mention it, my shower drain was looking really weird, like it was some sort of portal…), a universe where Biyombo has scoring moves and a guard willing to pass him the ball by the rim. And the old universe is where the normal Biyombo is, and it’s where the normal sucky Devonte’ Graham is, and it’s where I’m not anymore. I hope someone is feeding that universe’s Japurri Purrker.
Hornets fans might be able to give a bit of insight about what the heck is going on here, because I sure don’t have any. This is totally baffling to me. Why would Biyombo wait until almost a whole decade into his career before decided that scoring the ball was actually really cool and fun? I’m guessing Graham actually does have something to do with it, but that can’t be all of it, because there’s no way Graham is the best PG Biyombo has ever played with… right? Right?