After toiling through individual box-scores from the past four seasons, I have made an OFFICIAL DTB DETERMINATION:
This 25-point performance marks the first time since Ian Mahinmi signed with the Wizards that he has lived up to his contract.
If you’ve forgotten (and if you’re a ‘Zards fan, you’ve been trying really hard to forget), Ian Mahinmi is on the final year of a four-year, sixty-million dollar contract. If he had improved on the quality of his play in Indiana, or at least stayed at the level of play, the contract wouldn’t have been a disastrous overpay. But Mahinmi hasn’t been anything more than a decent backup in his four seasons in Washington, and often he’s been the token “injured guy in a suit on the bench” or sometimes just the token “uninjured but useless guy in a suit on the bench”.
His season-highs in points the last four seasons? 16, 17, 11, and 9. Only five times did Mahinmi score more points than he made millions of dollars per year.
Until now.
I guess it was only a matter of time until the ‘Zards brand of high-octane basketball resulted in a decent point total for Mahinmi. And this point total is way more than decent. It’s good. It’s great. It’s a career high. I thought that Pasecniks dude was going to come in and take all of Mahinmi’s minutes right at the point in time where Mahinmi was finally going to start getting minutes (thanks to a seriously injured ‘Zards bigman rotation), but Mahinmi, as they say, “clapped back”. He clapped back so hard that Pasecniks could only muster two points in this game.
Now, as of tonight, Mahinmi’s contract is more than just a gigantic expiring that can be used to help the Wizards accumulate assets; it’s a gigantic expiring that can also be a walking 20/10 machine if you trade it to the right situation!