J. Kyle Mann

I don't know if he's chaotic good, but he's chaotic neutral at least.

I floated him as a Rockets trade acquisition very early in the season after Fred Van Vliet got hurt.

And it's hard watching both these teams now and thinking, man, he would help them so much in just getting into the middle of the floor and creating in the way that he is for Atlanta right now.

Yeah, he does feel like a gamer at this particular moment.

Elevating, stepping into a matchup like this, completely undaunted, completely unfazed.

And that's a really difficult thing to do against not just Victor Weminyamo when he was out there before he left with the concussion protocol, but even just like Stephon Castle flying around on all the floor.

The way the Spurs guard generally, I think, is difficult for a lot of guards to handle.

And there's Scoot, complete poise, complete control of his game, making very few mistakes, if any, to be honest with you, over the course of that game.

It was remarkable.

Not only did I not think we would almost ever get a game like that from him based on what we've seen so far, but I don't know that there's been many guards across the postseason right now who have put together a game like that.

In a lesser way.

I mean, he's been a positive contributor for them, but the stuff CJ is giving the Hawks, for example, is on a totally different level.

You know what I wonder if is a part of this problem is we're coming out of a

a period of the NBA where I'm not going to say that the league was completely homogenous in terms of its play style, but the types of players who were being targeted were very much of archetypal molds in very specific ways.

Everyone wants this kind of two-way wing, wants this kind of lead guard who can pull up and shoot.

Everyone was kind of falling into their buckets.

And I think teams, in terms of the way they look at the personnel around the league, were thinking, at least this is my assumption based on some of the stuff we saw, that, oh, if it didn't work for this other team, and our play style is obviously very similar to theirs because a lot of the league is playing the same way, then why would they be any different for us?

Why would this player who's struggling over there be different over here?

That's kind of really changed over the last two seasons.

There has been a wild divergence in terms of what teams are going after, which teams are focusing offensive rebounding, which teams are falling into more mid-range offense, which teams are like how they're guarding pick and roll, what your defensive shell looks like.