Secretly Space Jesus

Fun fact: Evan Fournier is getting "beat" by his man, no matter if he's playing SG or SF. Oladipo, meanwhile, beats his man handily at SG and gets destroyed everywhere else.

Is Vuc even on the bench? I don't see him there.

Orlando has outscored Minnesota 51-30 in the second half.

Jason Smith, you did NOT get dunked on.

Giving Evan Fournier 15m because that's what Gordon Hayward got would be like if I were to burn my house down because my neighbor paid too much for a car.

Right. When Victor Oladipo isn't scoring well, he does a lot of things to help his team win. He rebounds very well for a shooting guard, has played elite defense so far this season both on and off the ball, passes well, and will create a couple fast breaks a game off steals and blocks. When Evan Fournier isn't scoring well, he's a slightly above average on-the-ball defender. When Fournier isn't scoring well, he's an ok 8th man. Also, the idea that Fournier needs to take Oladipo's minutes is insanity anyway, given that he currently leads the NBA in minutes played.

He's hurt.

People on this board are very defensive of Dedmon for some reason. I mean, I like Dedmon. He's a solid rotation big for his defense, even if he's more or less useless on offense. That's fine. There are guys who made great careers out of being that guy. But lets not lose sight of what Dedmon IS, which is basically "Like Birdman, but slightly better".

Oladipo's only real room for improvement is on his FG% and maybe his FT rate to some extent. In bigger terms, he's been somewhere between good and spectacular at basically everything else through what is an admittedly very small sample size. Meanwhile: Mario Hezonja currently has a negative PER.

What's weird to me is that Oladipo is largely playing like what everyone expected him to be when he was drafted(a shorter Andre Iguodala), and everyone's freaking out about him, as though there is no middle ground between star and scrub. I don't get it.

Well, that was just an awful play by Napier.

They typically don't call a foul when you go over the back of your own man.

Why has Harris only played 19 minutes?

Gordon is already such a good defensive player.

New Orleans is shooting 27.8%

This is insane. Both teams are on pace for like 22 turnovers and no one can dribble OR pass. It's nuts.

That's more of a concern to bring with your DOCTOR, not your Space Saviour.

Yeah, I missed the quote since I was in meetings all day yesterday with the Space Pope and the Space Cardinals, but the Magic/OKC game on Friday really was just the most Grantland game in recent memory.

People were using phrases like "shoot less".

I don't know if you haven't read this board, but that's evidently the opposite of what he should do.

I counted at least 5 of his misses that were pretty blatant fouls.

I'm going to assume Victor Oladipo did something truly terrible to each referee's family. It's really the only explanation I can come up with at this point.

Honestly, my hope is that HBO just lets Simmons put up a mostly subscription based site and takes all the best writers to it. I say that sincerely. Before ESPN let all its best sportswriters leave, Insider was absolutely worth 10 dollars a month. A version of Grantland that had even less interest in banal stories that every other site is running? Essentially a cross between Grantland, Ball Don't Lie circa '08, and FreeDarko circa '06? Oh man, that would be tremendous.

I read this 4 times, and I'm still not sure what point you're trying to make.