Wow, I didn’t realize how marginalized Nicolas Claxton has been recently. I knew he was getting decent minutes for a stretch in November, but since that month ended? Until tonight, he’d appeared in ONE game. Apparently he had “hamstring soreness”, but I bet literally every player could claim that ailment and have it not be a lie.
Well, apparently his hammy is all better now, because he definitely played tonight, and played a lot. After this game, I am now one of the thousands of Bucks fans who will (rightly or wrongly, probably a mix of both) think that Claxton is some sort of mega-stud who is way better than DeAndre Jordan and probably better than Jarrett Allen. Because he kinda dominated when he was on the court.
He was scared of nobody. Giannis Antetokounmpo? I think he views him as some sort of random Euro scrub. Dragan Bender? Another Euro scrub of the same caliber as Giannis. I actually thought Bender played pretty good, both on offense and defense, but he got owned by Claxton multiple times.
It would be great if the Nets had a center out of their trifecta that wasn’t a dunking-only kind of player on offense, but Claxton developing into the same kind of player as the other two has to be considered a win. At least he’s willing to shoot a few threes; I will forever remember with fondness the days of Jarrett Allen attempting to add that shot to his game.