So obviously Wembanyama played in MSG tonight. I made no special effort to look up info about the game, but I was bombarded by three negative stories out of nowhere. He said MSG "isn't as big as I expected," which was actually a cutoff quote, where he finished by saying the energy is still there. The Knicks fans chanted "overrated" at him. And even the House of Highlights video is titled "The MSG lights were too bright for Wemby "
When I saw that, I thought he must have had a terrible game. His stats?
14 points, 9 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 block. In 30 minutes.
In other words, perfectly fine. His jump shot was off (28%), but guess what... the game before that he shot 25%. And had 13 points and 10 rebounds. And no one savaged him. Because it wasn't in toxic town.
The NY media and fans also treat Julius Randle like garbage too. I hate Kyrie Irving, for example (I called him Kevin Snake & Flake), but Kyrie is an outright Anti-Semite. Is Randle that bad of a human being? They weren't much easier on Ewing.
We had a thread a couple years ago where we looked at the stats and found that Ben Simmons actually took a nosedive in his free throw rate and percentage in front of Philly fans, apparently due to their heckling. So treating your players like crap on their homecourt can have a negative effect. And a lot of guys won't want to sign with your team and walk into that environment. Especially not kids who are just starting in the NBA and who are likely superstars of the future, and who seem to be decent people, who are getting a bad taste in their mouth from the moment they get near your team for the first time.
He was not perfectly fine, he was bad. He was 1 for 9 from the field at one point and got his points in garbage time in the 4th.
The hate on Randle is warranted. He is a lazy player more often than not and crumbles mentally when things get tough. There is a multi-year sample size of this.