Mar 13 2009
An Ode to Batum
I really hope this guy accepts my friend request on Facebook.
I mean, how many of us are there? And by us, I mean francophone Blazer fans. We can’t number greater than, I don’t know, 100? Maybe 200, tops. We should stick together, and the great uniter of Francoblazerphonie, our Barack Obama, is Nicolas Batum.
Tonight, he gave us reason to appreciate the choice. The man was nigh-unstoppable and every time he left the game, things turned into a complete disaster. That’s the sign of a young player growing into his role and leaving his mark. That, and the whole hitting the game-winning three-pointer thing. And the incredibly athletic blocks. And the dunk after dunk after dunk. In case you can’t tell yet, Nicolas is running away with the title of the blog’s favorite player, and it’s not even a close race.
Okay, that was a lie. The other horse, Brandon Roy, recovered from a horrendous start and proved the law of averages as he started hitting shots from the late third quarter on. He led the team with over 30 points for like the 80th time this season. It’s pretty easy to get to 30 though when you shoot 17 foul shots (out of a team total of 45).
Once again, good Travis showed up to save the day. He was making key plays everywhere and even playing good defense to boot. It was impossible to pick out any glaring mistakes in his play. Just great news to see Travis playing at the highest level of his career at exactly the right time.
Of course, the rest of the non-bench players were solid and contributed to the win. The bench Cerberus of Frye, Bayless, and Rodriguez were worse than unremarkable; they were just bad. They allowed the Nets to extend the lead, and really knocked the team out of sync whenever they came in.
Whatever, though. Nicolas got the chance he’s spent the whole season earning and capitalized on it. Congrats M. Incroyable. (Is that a good nickname? Anyone have suggestions?)
