With this game, Norman Powell raised his shooting percentage in the Raptors’ first-round series against the Nets to a blistering 60.5%. That’s pretty nuts for a guard-sized player, and that’s EVEN MORE NUTS for a player who has been deemed unworthy of a starting role on his team. He also averaged 17.5 PPG per game in the series, providing proof that his high shooting percentage was not merely a result of him shooting a wimpy amount of shots. This is not a “Brandan Wright 25 PER because he only takes shots he’s guaranteed to make” situation. This is a “Norman Powell is a certified beast” situation combined with an “I hate Greivis Vasquez” situation.
It seems likely that, in order to get this level of play from Powell, Nick Nurse (or maybe an assistant coach with more knowledge in these things) hypnotized Powell and tricked him into thinking the Nets were actually the Bucks. Since Powell always plays well against the Bucks, well past the point where you could pass it off as a fluke, it is in the Raptors’ best interest to play the Bucks all the time, thus getting the maximum amount of production from Powell. Since the schedule-makers don’t just let two teams play each other for 82 games, the next best option was this hypnotization, which is borderline unethical but you know what else is borderline unethical? The merciless brutality with which Powell dominates his foes.
Some people will think this is a conspiracy theory. They’ll say it’s more likely that Powell is simply that good, and that he doesn’t need to be hypnotized to play like this. I don’t know how it can be a “conspiracy” when it’s based on 100% real-life evidence such as box-scores and my own observations (which are known to be ironclad in their accuracy), but I’ll let the doubters doubt for now. I’ll be proven correct in the end. I always am.