Sometimes I have to go back and re-read my old descriptions to remember what my opinions used to be. Things change so fast in the NBA that I can be right one day and totally wrong the next. Luckily I am mostly right, except when I called John Wall a bust just because he was a turnover machine who couldn’t shoot.
My fear was that I had unfairly accused Jonas Valanciunas of being a bust at one point. Sifting through the archives, I find fabricated stories of Jonas watching stuff on TV, but no outright accusations of bustitude. The closest I get is last year, when I labeled Valanciunas as merely “okay” and postulated that he would get better with more minutes. Whew! Consider that bullet dodged.
So, now he’s getting consistent minutes (although not any more that last season, what the hell?), and he’s doing great things with them. However, I do not attribute this increased success to Dwayne Casey’s finally realizing the potential that JV has to work with. I fully believe that if there were any true centers on the roster other than Greg Stiemsma and Lucas Nogueira, JV would be pushed back to twenty minutes a game and they would neglect to run any offense through him. Raptors fans should cross their fingers against a surprise Aaron Gray signing.