OK that was extremely fun and I'm still thinking about it
I watched the first half of the UK-KU game at a sports/dog bar with a friend who was in town, blissfully unaware of Jay Bilas. Sure, UK simply could not miss for a substantial piece of the first, but KU clawed back and just kept making plays. Malört is hitting New Orleans hard for some reason, and that shooting display had me tempted—should I manifest a temporary liquid portal to Chicago. It wasn’t necessary—we got the job done in the way that we often do.
This game was about discovery. And lord, we were not disappointed on that front. We figured out a little more about these dudes, who they are and also who they aren’t. Some question marks grew larger, and some became exclamation points. We also discovered the queen of our fandom—even in our GIF-reaction saturated culture, I have never seen a single piece of content that captures the Jayhawk fan pathos more than this one.
Observations + ~vibes~ below. Thanks for reading and your patience, I love thinking about this game so in my mind’s eye a three-days-late newsletter is truly A-OK.
Hunter Dickinson is that dude.
Rally House needs to stock the Jamari McDowell NIL jersey immediately. The dude has pluck.
I tried—oh my god how I tried!—to not look up Nick Timberlake’s +/-, but I saw it on accident. There’s plenty of debate about +/- as a good statistic—I am neutral about it, but eye-popping numbers on that metric can correlate with the ol’ eye-test. In conclusion, do not look up Nick Timberlake’s +/-.
Though the lane can get very crowded—Self said so himself!—the KJ Adams/Dickinson fit so far has been very exciting. We’re talking about an area of the floor that is less spaced than we would like it to be, and yet, KJ is eating. He’s catching lobs, overwhelming spillover defenders from the flock of dudes around Hunter, playing like a genuine tornado in tight spaces. KJ Adams will play in the NBA.
Some has been made of the “What is he doing? I can’t trust him!” reaction gif. Elmarko Jackson will find his way. This is a high caliber player who had the ball constantly as a five-star prospect in high school—this is a big adjustment, and while Self likes to play multiple guards who can handle the ball at once, the Dajuan Harris/Jackson dynamic has its imbalances.
Dajuan Harris, ladies and gentlemen. Harris is almost certainly on the KU PG Mt. Rushmore once he’s done. Both he and Dickinson are eligible to return next season LOL.
Just for funsies, let’s run some bar napkin math on whether Harris can get to the top of KU’s all-time assist leaderboard. Last year, he had 224 assists on the season—let’s say he repeats that total this year. That brings him to 679 total. Let’s presume he sticks around for one more year, and let’s throw on 224 assists. That brings him to 903… which is still short of Aaron Miles by 51 assists. Miles authored his record in four years. Get him in the rafters, now.
Hawaii next. Bye!