March Madness, the NHL heating up, the Masters, MLB to start on March 29th, the OKC AAA Dodgers to start a month later, fishing….I’ll be okay. I have multiple strategies in play.
You know…you look at these Poku prospect highlights and you know what you don’t see much of… talented black players. Evidently not many talented black players in the Greek B League.
This is how I looked as the starting two guard on my 9th grade Herbert Hoover basketball team because they were no talented black players to beat out for a starting spot.
We went and played Capitol Hills’ 9th grade team over there and they had this 6′ 6″ black guard named Winfred Boynes who blocked three of my shots in that game. Winfred would later in life become the Oklahoma City High School Player of the Year and earn a scholarship at a West coast school. I think he even got drafted.
But right then and there even though I played a season of JV basketball at fully integrated John Marshall—I knew that me being a combo third baseman-left fielder who could hit was going to be my basketball future at John Marshall.
So as I ponder the Presti Poku experiment in the more than fully integrated NBA…I wonder how this Poku experiment will turn out for Sam Presti two to three years from now.
The Thunder announced of course as the G League is about over that The Poku has to come back and play for the Thunder the second half of the season. He has to come back—that’s a team policy. His stats in 13 G League games were …25.2 mpg, 7.9 ppg, 7.3 rpg, 4 apg, and 1.1 blkpg. You can’t in the G League trade Poku for Jalen Green. They won’t let you do that even though my buddy OKC Jim on the Daily Thunder messageboard is hoping that’s something Presti could do.
BTW…OKC Jim > Justin My Red-Haired Stepchild. Just saying. That was somewhat escoteric so don’t try and figure it out.
This probably means since Poku got 17 minutes a game before he was exiled to the G League that one of my favorite Thunder players Mikey Muscala or Kenrich Willaims is about to be benched or traded.
But here’s what I would say again in regards to Poku…there is something adorable in watching him play basketball even with that low trajectory shot of his which Winfred Boynes would hve blocked five times a game.
The thing is you can’t take your eyes off him even when he’s playing like a complete trainwreck. There is something about him which makes you want to adopt him.
If I were Sam Presti I would at this point try and turn Poku into the Serbian version of Ben Simmons and not Tony Kukoc. His skill set minus shooting a basketball isn’t horrible and there’s that reach which is going set some sort of metric record for defensive pass deflections if he stays in the fully integrated NBA.
I wish Poku well and let’s get March Madness rolling.