My favorite random NBA storyline so far is Jay Huff. A 27 year old 7’1 center who looks like a bearded CPA. A career G-League guy with like 20 games in various teams always in April tanking season.
Signed a two-way contract with Memphis this season. After 3 games he’s averaging 20 minutes per game, 13 ppg, shooting 8-14 from 3. Also has over a block per game. I’m sure he’ll be back at the g-league soon but pretty dream start for a guy who I wouldn’t be suprirsed if he has an updated linkedin profile.
In college, Huff was a good three point shooter, a really good pick and roll guy, and a great shot blocker. Sounds like that’s what he’s doing in the NBA. I think he could definitely stick as a role player.
Worth noting that if Jordan really wanted to, he could have created the same arrangement with his own son. He was still playing in his early forties and probably could have continued for another couple years and made it happen had he chosen to.
Also worth noting that there is no way in hell that Jordan would ever have ever finagled his son into the League unearned.
Jordan scored 8.0 points per game in his true freshman year in 2009–10 and scored 1,152 points in his college career.[5] On November 12, 2010, the opening game of the 2010–11 season, Jordan led UCF to victory against University of West Floridascoring a career high 28 points on 8–11 field-goal shooting and 5–7 from the 3-point line.[6] He also had a team-high 18 points in upsetting number-16 ranked Florida on December 1, 2010.[7]
Apparently during that time UCF was in the midst of a 13-year absence from the tournament. Not exactly a top tier program. USC isn’t Kentucky, but it’s a legit program.
So, I went ahead and looked this up. In Jordan’s 1st season he averaged about 5min/game while Bronny averaged about 20. He scored about as many pts in 3 seasons at U of I as Bronny did at one in USC. While they admittedly both were not great, I think we can safely say that Jordan was significantly worse.
Probably not so hot take - but if it weren’t for his last name, I think Bronny would have been a bench player at USC and also played like 5 minutes a game. He was easily one of the worst player in their rotation and likely worse than quite a few that were barely playing.
I’d bet if Jordan had hyped his son like Lebron and the media did, he could have found some program that would have given him more minutes. Also helps that college sports are even more revenue driven now, and Bronny was a draw, even if not good.
I’m not saying Bronny is terrible - he’s clearly a good athlete and has some skills and maybe if he had time to develop (didn’t help he got injured before start of the season) could one day a fringe NBA player, but he clearly isn’t one now and I think being propped up like this is only going to hurt his development and kill whatever chance he might have had.
