Game Thread #2: Hawks vs Magic - Home Opener - 10/26/19

[jayu70]

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

[lethalweapon3]

“I Know I’ve Been Changed.”

He poured his heart and soul into this theatrical production. His life savings, too, such as it was.

The conceptual vision of this 22-year-old aspiring playwright, a recent arrival to Atlanta who escaped an abusive home life in New Orleans, was a story of spirit overcoming unspeakable adversities and outlasting one’s own depravities. That story was finally coming to fruition, live, on a stage, at a community theater not far from his meager downtown studio apartment off Peachtree Street.

The play opened to an audience of 30 people, the premiere being the maximum draw, and to lackluster local reviews. Out of all 12,000 dollars he arrived with from Louisiana, the aspiring playwright was soon penniless and kicked out into the streets of Atlanta. Again. And not for the last time.

He could have stopped there, in the mid-1990s, as a construction worker and used car salesperson who once tried his hand at producing inspirational stage entertainment. It would have made for a nice story to share at a watering hole someday.

But Tyler Perry was not through.

Instead, he spent the next six years re-writing and re-engineering his opus. The breakthrough came with what Perry perceived as his final big gamble, presenting the play at the House of Blues, a church-repurposed venue at the seedy edge of downtown that was itself trying to establish a foothold. Through better word-of-mouth marketing and more compelling weaves of dramatic and comedic scenes, Perry and the House of Blues had a huge local hit, drawing lines around the corner to buy tickets.

He could have stopped there, that guy who had a boffo play downtown that one time. He was not through. As the show moved onto the Chitlin’ Circuit across the country, Perry kept right on writing, armed with a formula as welcomed by his loyal consumers as anything Coca Cola ever concocted. Audiences soon knew, if the production’s title began with “Tyler Perry’s…”, they were in for a rip-roaring, tissue-tearing, get-up-on-your-feet treat. No matter the critical reviews, audiences came in droves.

Newer plays, bigger venues. New stars created by him, A-List stars who craved to associate with him. People from all walks of life -- the churches, the comedy clubs, comeback actors and award winners, single moms and great grandmoms -- wanted to grab a hold of this Tyler Perry fella. He wasn’t done.

He slapped on a grandmotherly wig and muumuu getup that was provocatively popular in his plays, and he soon ventured into filmmaking. And later, onto television, helping Oprah’s fledgling cable network rise up off the viewership mat with one salacious TV series after another.

Most of this box-office-busting, ratings-bonanza hit-making, carried on while Hollywood and Broadway stood on the outside, stunned by the singular boldness of Perry’s independent spirit. In short order, the stuffed shirts at the big production studios had made it clear -- they didn’t much want Tyler Perry around.

Conversely, Tyler Perry made it clear -- he didn’t much need Hollywood around him. He was a self-made success, at multiple forms of entertainment, pretty much despite them. This past month, he earned his Walk of Fame star anyway. “For anyone whose dreams may be on life support,” Perry addressed the crowd, I want you to walk past this star, in particular, and know that I’ve been there.”

As he clutched his Ultimate Icon trophy at this year’s BET Awards ceremony, Perry offered up words of wisdom for persons of color striving for better representation in American media. “While you’re fighting for a seat at the table,” Perry told them, “I’ll be down in Atlanta building my own.”

Where, precisely? At a huge swath of what was previously Fort MacPherson, a closed US Army base that, at the time of the Civil War, sited Confederate soldiers, “plotting and planning,” he said, “on how to keep 3.9 million Negroes enslaved.”

“Now,” the once broke and homeless Atlanta resident noted, to thunderous applause, “that land is owned… by one Negro.” At 330 acres, Tyler Perry Studios is bigger, in land area, than Hollywood’s Warner Bros., Walt Disney Studios, and Paramount Pictures. Combined. Will his film studio one day become bigger in other respects, too? Don’t count him out.

The new state highway sign, directing drivers to Tyler Perry Studios, is adjacent to the longstanding sign for Sylvan Road, an Atlanta street that was the site of one of the apartments that evicted him just over two decades ago. Headed down the wrong road, Tyler’s life could have gone one way. Instead, he figured out how to make his own lane. Today, he’s making a way for many others.

Another local who once made a brief living selling cars? How about RuPaul Andre Charles? Kicked out of high school in San Diego, ostensibly, for being truant, Charles moved east with his sister and brother-in-law, working for six years in the family auto sales business. He didn’t graduate here in Atlanta, either, but it was at the local high school’s performing arts program where he found his calling.

“You can call me, ‘he’. You can call me, ‘she’. You can call me Regis and Kathie Lee,” one of RuPaul’s now-famous lines go, “I don’t care! Just as long as you call ME.” Ru’s willful embrace of gender-bending for purposes of entertainment was not entirely a transcendent thing in NYC, or LA. But he found a way to make himself stand out even amongst those in the burgeoning drag scene of Midtown Atlanta. It is this city’s glitzy gumbo pot of condo and office towers now. But it was the drag performers of the 1980s, and RuPaul notably, that helped rambunctious Midtown claim its counter-cultural ascendancy.

“RuPaul is RED HOT” was the sign repeatedly plastered on dumpsters behind the neighborhood’s withered apartment dwellings. Ru would know, because she’s the one who put them there, after moving into a sublet apartment blocks away from the wild all-night dance clubs and stages that lined this once-abandoned stretch of Peachtree Street. She also promoted herself through a weekly video show on public-access TV, and through his own filmmaking, “these trashy little movies on VHS,” Ru explained. “Atlanta gave me the freedom to produce that kind of stuff.”

While most envision Ru these days with glamourous wigs and glittery attire, in the 1980s, he was this town’s androgynous punk-drag performer. The frontperson for a local punk-rock band called Wee Wee Pole, Ru stood in tall contrast to the expected “norms”, if you will, of Southern-style drag presentation as The Genteel Women of Tara.

He could have stopped there, that guy who once headlined standing-room-only, late-night shows in a now gentrified part of town, back in the 1980s. She could have stopped after moving to New York City and emerging quickly as the Queen of Manhattan.

He could have stopped at being that partying guy in the crowd with the Afro-wig who carried the day for Athens band The B-52’s iconic “Love Shack” music video. Or, as the Supermodel who had just one thing to say – “You better WORK!” – in the chart-busting dance hit of her own in the early 1990s. As the first male to hold a modeling contract for a major cosmetics line. As TV’s first openly gay national talk show host.

But, no. RuPaul wasn’t through.

America’s Biggest Drag Superstar made it her mission to find America’s Next Drag Superstar. Putting the campy drama of hard-working drag queens front-and-center on the small screen while merging America’s Next Top Model with Project Runway, RuPaul’s Drag Race was born in 2009. A decade later, the Emmy-winning reality competition show continues to soar annually in ratings and Twitter reactions as it anchors its Viacom cable channels.

Its internationally inspirational host has vaulted, meanwhile, from a counter-cultural icon to a cross-cultural one. Around the corner from her modest old apartment, RuPaul returns to Midtown, the neighborhood she put on the global map, in a few weeks, this time bringing her Drag Race World Tour to Atlanta Symphony Hall. “I never set out to be a role model,” Ru admitted to Vogue UK. “I may have set out to be a Super model, but not a role model. But I accept the responsibility and it’s an honor.”

Who quits Georgia Tech in their senior year to go to work? You might, if your dad had some pull as a local executive at computing giant IBM in the 1980s. But who, a few years later, quits IBM in the 1980s… IBM!... to pursue a career in… comedy tours???

You might be Jeff Foxworthy, a kid who grew up in the little ol’ town of Hapeville in the shadow of Atlanta’s big ol’ airport. Jeff’s co-workers prodded the jovial mainframe repair technician to enter the Great Southeastern Laugh-Off competition, at a comedy club behind a diner north of Buckhead. He entered, and he “won”… second place. He was inspired enough, by this victorious-ish reception, to leave those green blinking cursors and heavy plastic boxes behind, for good.

But, here’s the rub. The “professional” comedy world, such as it was, didn’t look fondly upon those who endeavored below the Mason-Dixon line. Intellectualism and wit were not seen as likely strong suits for Southerners who ventured into standup. Even if you were a clever young man who did just fine at Georgia Tech and IBM, to the rest of the world, there was always that drawl that had people seeing you as a country bumpkin and selling you short.

“I think it was 1987,” Jeff recalled to MLive a couple years ago. “They were kidding me because I had this Southern accent.” Foxworthy’s ventures had him joining other comedians at standup venues outside Detroit, this time behind a bowling emporium. “I was wearing blue jeans and cowboy boots and drove a pickup truck. They were kidding me about being a redneck.” Little did these jokester upstarts know what they were about to unearth.

“I said, ‘Come, look out the window. If you don’t think you have rednecks in Michigan, look. People are valet parking… in the bowling alley!’” He made his point, with his uniquely humorous style. But from that moment on, he was done with pulling his punchlines. “I went back to the hotel that night and said, ‘I know what I am but, apparently, a lot of people don’t.’ And I wrote, ’10 Ways to Tell How You Might Be a Redneck,’ never thinking it was going to be a book.”

“From that first night, not only did people laugh, they were pointing at each other.” The best comedians offer up plenty of self-effacing humor, but offer audiences opportunities to laugh about themselves, and discover the silly commonalities they share with strangers. His “You Might Be a Redneck, If…” one-liners were not merely comedy gold. His first two “Redneck” comedy albums went certified Platinum.

That success spawned an eponymous TV sitcom, “The Jeff Foxworthy Show,” that was promptly cancelled by network execs who felt his routines were “too Southern,” he was told, for a national audience. (“Has ANYONE heard me TALK?”, he later quipped to his standup audiences). He could have stopped there, that guy who made people cackle with an unending litany of redneck jokes.

But Jeff Foxworthy was not done.

More Grammy-nominated comedy albums were in the offing. Country music awards host, nationally syndicated radio show host. A voiceover for animated movies. Writing an autobiography, writing a cookbook, writing Redneck Dictionaries. 28 books authored… and counting. Having long demonstrated he was, indeed, Smarter Than A 5th Grader, Jeff became a primetime game-show host, daring contestants and grade-schoolers to flex their brains, too. Need a Bible-quiz game show host? Jeff’s got you covered.

“Southern-fried” and “common-man” comedy was now firmly in demand, and through the wildly popular “Blue Collar Comedy Tour,” Foxworthy convened several of his comedian friends who would become icons by their own right. Larry the Cable Guy? Ron White? Bill Engvall? Did you doubt they would all become household names and sought-out celebrities by the mid-2000s? Here’s your sign.

The guy whose professional future was once questioned and belittled has become the top-selling comedy recording artist in history. All the while, over the past decade, Foxworthy has toiled as an advocate for the homeless. Working with Atlanta Mission, he arrives with Chick-fil-A biscuits in the mornings, holds Bible study sessions for hundreds of homeless men, and promises support with housing and family assistance for those making progress in recovering from drug and/or alcohol addictions.

“I’ve always had a heart for the underdog,” Jeff explained to First Coast News, “because I’m an underdog, where I came from. I just don’t think you can judge somebody, based on the quality of their shirt or their shoes, because you don’t know what beats in their heart underneath.”

How about one more underdog?

“I would be over sleeping on the floor,” said Montero Lamar Hill, a former resident of the Bankhead Courts projects, and a recent graduate of Lithia Springs High, of his sister’s house in Atlanta. “I didn’t want to come back home, because I knew my parents would be mad at me.”

Montero’s story of having struggled to make ends meet, working low-wage gigs at Zaxby’s and Six Flags after dropping out of college (unlike rising Tech senior Foxworthy, Hill left West Georgia U. as a freshman) to become a rapper, isn’t ground-breaking stuff, not in this day and age. Yet this newly 20-year-old’s particular tale was being published by Time magazine, for their cover story, and with good reason.

2019, A.D., IS The Year of Lil Nas X. Like it or not. Without a doubt, many are in the “not” column when it pertains to the out-of-nowhere, self-made artist with a “country-trap” blockbuster hit. But the “nots” have found themselves increasingly too small to matter, their shrills and shrieks drowned out by popular demand.

Hill, like legions of teens before and soon-to-follow, craved to become an Internet sensation. Also, like 99.99999% of them, he just couldn’t quite figure out how. Facebook, Vine, Twitter, Soundcloud, making memes, making songs, fashioning himself a foremost Nicki Minaj stan. “At first, I was just bored, like, ‘Hey, Twitter, I made a song,” he told Teen Vogue. “But I’m like, ‘Wait, this is really hard.’”

“A lot of it was me trying to be something that people would like, instead of making music I would like.” That revelation was the first crack in the dam. But time was running out with his sis, who was also hosting two other siblings (including a brother fresh out from prison) while raising kids of her own.

Her warning to Montero that he would soon be kicked out… Where is he gonna go? What is he gonna do?... spurred, if you will, him to sit on her back porch and listen to a generic country-trap beat that prompted the now famous lyrics to “Old Town Road”. He’ll tell you exactly what he’s gonna do, and you’ll find yourself singing the lyrics, recorded in a modest Atlanta studio in less than one hour for $20, right in tune with him.

Many wannabe influencers and artists struggle to navigate the changing tides of the Internet streaming age, but Hill seems to have figured out how to surf the waves without having to rent a board. Listing his song as a country tune on SoundCloud and iTunes, he was able to stand out in ways he would not under the crowded Hip Hop format.

When “Old Town Road” caught a high tide of eager young ears on the video-making app TikTok (Yes, we all know where TikTok is from, don’t blame LeBron), the old-school radio industry couldn’t avoid it. Some country stations copped the infectious song off the Internet for casual airplay, before Hill could even find himself a record label to rep him. Listeners slammed radio stations’ phone lines and inboxes, desperate to find the song and the mystery artist.

But how Lil Nas X wound up getting Billboard’s attention was no fault of his own. Trying to stay ahead of the game, the music-ranking company recently began tracking much more than radio airplay, applying weights to better account for Internet-streamed songs and albums in its weekly “Hot 100” lists. Thanks largely to those strategic changes, Billboard execs woke one March morning to find an ATL-area kid’s online jam debuting on the Hot 100 (#83), the Hot R&B/Hip Hop chart (#36), and the Hot Country Songs (#19) chart. All at the same time.

Someone in Nashville was not thrilled with this particular crossover song, not at all. In their infinite wisdom, Billboard surreptitiously omitted it from the latter list the following week. They thought they had done so neatly and quietly enough. But the unexplained absence was too conspicuous to avoid the firestorm of controversy and “country-splaining” that ensued. It’s not “country” enough, they said. Doesn’t have enough of the right “elements” for the genre, they said, or maybe too much of those “other” elements. Mama, please, don’t let your babies grow up to be music execs.

If you ever want something remotely interesting to become insatiably popular, get it labeled, “That Thing That THEY Don’t Want You to See/Hear/Taste!” Hill could have stopped there, as that kid that created a brief spell of buzz with his little ditty on the Interwebs. But Lil Nas X was far from done.

He formed an alliance with Billy Ray Cyrus, the famous country singer who knows a thing about one-hit-wonders and offered support, and the resulting “OTR” remix became a bigger banger than the original. Because of Billboard’s rule, lumping remixes in with original songs, “Old Town Road” went stratospheric. More remixes and collabs with a diverse range of artists would soon follow, adding fuel to an unquenchable fire. DJ Diplo. Atlanta rapper Young Thug. The Yodeling Kid, Mason Ramsey. A K-pop rapper from BTS (“Seoul Town Road”).

In the space of months, Montero Hill went from a random, struggling young adult stringing out his time in his sister’s backyard to the singular producer of the world’s longest-running song on the Hot 100 (19 weeks at the #1 spot) since Billboard began the chart in 1958.

He has been hauling in golden accolades – this year’s MTV Video Music Award for Song of the Year, the Teen Choice Award for best R&B/Hip Hop Song, the BET Hip Hop Award for Single of the Year and Best Collab (with Cyrus). Next month, he’ll be the first out gay man to be a nominee at country music’s CMA awards. All this, from making music he likes, not following some bigwig’s time-tested formulae.

“Well, to me, Lil Nas X is my mic drop moment.” So says Ken Burns – yes, That Guy – fresh off of producing his latest major PBS documentary epic, Country Music.

“We spend eight episodes and sixteen and a half hours talking about the fact that country music has never been one thing… and here we are, in a new modern age that we’re not touching, with all these classic, binary arguments about Billboard not listing [“Old Town Road”] on the Country chart, and it turns out to be not just the #1 Country hit, but the #1 single, period. And it’s a black, gay rapper!”

“It just is proving,” Burns suggests, “that all of those cycles that we have been reporting on across the decades – all of the tensions in country music of race, class, poverty, gender, creativity versus commerce, geography – are still going on.”

Only in America, many rightfully exclaim. But an important corollary seems increasingly hard to disavow: Only from Atlanta.

It’s here where, as Burns alludes, people of many backgrounds flex their creativity to conquer commerce, transcending societal norms, the “it’s not your turn”-isms, the “you’re not people’s type”-isms, the “there’s only one way to go about it”-isms. Everyday people defying convention, succeeding spectacularly, and steering their own paths, despite the whims of self-styled kingmakers and queenmakers.

The mythological Horatio Alger tales that inspired people in the Gilded Age, centuries ago, are happening, in real life, in real time. These “rags to riches” stories come about in a myriad of ways Alger himself could never have dreamed up, happening to individuals those of Alger’s ilk could never have envisioned.

Notably, they’re happening in a place – Atlanta – whose own rise, as a modern metropolis that stands quite well on its own merits, could not be grasped by those who attribute, “making it in America,” to the bright lights of old megalopolises like New York, Chicago or L.A.

Julia Roberts. Spike Lee. d*ck Van Dyke. Ryan Seacrest. Clyde Frazier. Clark Howard. Chris Tucker. Most recently, Coco Gauff. These are names people across the country, if not around the globe, know quite well, and most don’t know them by their leaner years in the Atlanta area.

Some were born in metropolitan Atlanta. Some were transplants. Some had more means than others. But even people who have long lived here don’t recognize how significant the Atlanta region was, as the definitive Proving Ground for the world-renowned celebrities these people would become. Of The ATL, today’s Sinatra would croon, “Before you even try to make it anywhere, figure out how to make it, here.”

“We full!” Many folks already in the Atlanta area, including transplants from generations ago, still stand aghast at how many young people flock here to stay, thousands of newbies striking out on their own, others with kids or whole nuclear families in tow. Some are destitute and desperate; some are striving to gain a foothold in America for the first time; some are kids eager to get out from under their well-made families’ thumbs. Folks from the outside looking in generally don’t get it, either.

If suns-out, guns-and-buns-out is your scene, there are many more tropical and coastal climes, with hotties in tanks and sundresses, to choose from. There are more established financial centers, bigger entertainment and media hubs, infinitely more affordable places to live. Not only are there no palm trees, or money growing on trees, you can’t even pick peaches off the street trees here. So, what’s the big deal about Coming To ATL? Can't you just go to Disney World if you want to make your dreams come true?

The skeptics are unable to see the mysticism that these young hopefuls do, what brings the storylines of some of America’s most successful self-made people to fruition. Not everyone, or even most citizens, achieve their dreams here. But there are those who have the best combination of unique talent, drive, and fortitude. For that subset, it is the ATL, and the synergy amongst its residents, that bears better fruit than anywhere else they could conceivably go.

Move Fast and Break Things is not just a well-worn mantra in Silicon Valley. It’s part of the common thread for how ATLiens ascend out of seemingly nowhere. They take huge personal risks. They often fail, learn from their failures, re-assess, and persist in pecking away until the breakthrough happens.

Crucially, these ATLiens do not stop at just the first hint of success. They’re quick to show gratitude to those who offered them support, no matter how small, along the way. They connect with, and assist, people who struggle in similar ways as they once did. And they work around, over, and past, those who are too quick to pigeon-hole and castigate them based on who they are, how they appear, or where they came from.

Taking big chances often involves making the most out of what limited means one has at his or her disposal. “At the time, I was young and I didn't have no job,” said Mississippian-turned-Atlantan Justin Scott to Pitchfork magazine, back in 2010, in a now-familiar refrain around here. “It wasn't like I could really afford to pay for beats. At the same time, there was this program that came out for PlayStation, MTV Music Generator, where you could make your own beats. So I started making my own beats right around that time because I just couldn't afford to pay for the other ones.”

Fast forward nine years, and Scott has released his fourth studio album. As the critically acclaimed rapper Big K.R.I.T., he provides the pump-up gameday Intro this season for the Atlanta Hawks at State Farm Arena. When he exclaims to the local crowd, “I. NEED. YOUR. ENERGY.”, Big K.R.I.T. isn’t goofing around.

He, like the Hawks (1-0), thrive on that unique, True To Atlanta spirit that can transform Underdogs into Top Dawgs in a heartbeat. The kind of unbridled energy that morphs a 15-year-old drug arrestee into a 35-year-old Grammy nominee named 2Chainz, and… not stopping there… a 42-year-old minority owner of an NBA G-league team in his birthplace. ATLiens may fall down, even hard, on occasion. But when they figure out how to get up, man alive, do they get UP.

After the 2019 All-Star Break, coach Lloyd Pierce’s team pulled off six victories in their final nine games here at State Farm Arena. Often, his Hawks managed to enthrall audiences even in some tank-friendly outcomes where his Hawks fell just short by the final horn. Even with NBA Finals contenders like Milwaukee and Philadelphia passing through, Trae Young, John Collins, Kevin Huerter and the Hawks discovered an increasing number of attendees at The Farm were not simply here to cheer on the opposition.

A winning home record is a necessity for a team, even one in the Eastern Conference, seeking a reservation for the NBA Playoffs (23-18 minimum over the past four seasons). Coming off a satisfying season-opening win in Motown, Atlanta’s first meeting with Steve Clifford’s bedeviling Orlando Magic (7:30 PM Eastern, Fox Sports Southeast and 92.9 FM in ATL, Fox Sports Florida) kicks off a run of six home games over 14 days, interrupted only by a brief trip to Miami next Tuesday.

Feasting on the fan energy and picking up a few tough Ws in this early stretch could go a very long way in achieving goals by this season’s end. Especially against teams like the reigning Southeast Division champion Magic (4-0 versus ATL last season; finished 3 games ahead of 9-seed Charlotte in the division). Orlando is stocked with veterans that have already built up a solid rapport, especially on the defensive end (1st in D-Rating after a 94-85 home win over Cleveland), while phasing in a few young hopefuls, like former top-pick Markelle Fultz, and former Cam Reddish high-school teammate Mo Bamba.

For a team that’s committed to learn on the fly faster than anyone in this league, this fever-paced Hawks team is Moving Fast and Breaking Things, lathering up the kind of local support that could soon propel them past teams like Orlando and right on over the perpetual Lottery hump. You’d best believe, these Hawks don’t intend to stop there. With fan support behind them, they’re gonna ride, until they can’t no more.

Whenever this core of upstarts emerges from the NBA crucible as championship contenders, they’ll know… thanks to Atlanta, They’ve Been Changed. All around town, we’ll sense it, too. Along with Atlanta United, this group of Hawks could help change the trajectory of Atlanta sports history, forever. And it won’t be terribly long thereafter before the rest of the world wonders, “Whoa… where did all these great guys come from?”


Let’s Go Atlanta! Let’s Go Hawks!

~lw3

[ducler]

Read on Twitter

[CP War Hawks]

Would like to send a message with a win in the division. Their length will cause troubles on both ends. They need Huerter and/or Redd to carry some of the scoring load.

[Jamaaliver]

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

[Jamaaliver]

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

[azuresou1]

Huerter still looks really rusty and a little mechanical.

Cam looks invisible on the floor.

I really like Bembry's energy and his ball handling has improved, but sadly his shot still looks irredeemably broken.

[azuresou1]

First Trae/JC lob of the season!

[jayu70]

What an effin WIN! 

And, yes I was in the house chanting M-V-P along with every Hawks fan !!!  It was seirreal

My throat hurts from ca-cawing all night!

The Farm ERUPTED, it was deafening when Trae hit that 3!!!!

2-0 babeeee!!!

GO HAWKS!!!

[ATL Boy]

Trae is the star this franchise has thirsted for since Nique.

[jayu70]

Read on Twitter

?s=20

Read on Twitter

?s=20

[hawks_fan25]

Huerter still looks really rusty and a little mechanical.

Cam looks invisible on the floor.

I really like Bembry's energy and his ball handling has improved, but sadly his shot still looks irredeemably broken.

The good news with Cam is the guy he’s guarding, whoever it is, also looks invisible. If he can keep locking down people then we can wait for his offense to come around.

I like Huerter on the second team. When he gets it going he’ll provide that group some spacing.

[ATL Boy]

Huerter still looks really rusty and a little mechanical.

Cam looks invisible on the floor.

I really like Bembry's energy and his ball handling has improved, but sadly his shot still looks irredeemably broken.

The good news with Cam is the guy he’s guarding, whoever it is, also looks invisible. If he can keep locking down people then we can wait for his offense to come around.

I like Huerter on the second team. When he gets it going he’ll provide that group some spacing.

I'm also a big fan of having Huerter out there when Trae and John are off the floor. He's one of the few players on this team that can create his own shot.