It's Time for a Nuanced Conversation about Lonnie Walker IV
Or I'm just going to bang my head against the wall for a bit.
Perhaps you heard this already but Lonnie Walker IV set a new career high in points when he scored 30 against the Kings in a losing effort last night. In fact, he’s scored 20 points or more in each of his last four games. Three of those games were losses.
One of them was a loss against the Kings. At home.
Last week I wrote an already foolish article with a prediction that the newly-acquired Josh Richardson would prove to be the nail in Walker’s coffin. Richardson has made a total of five baskets since becoming a Spur. Walker made 12 against the Kings alone.1
It’s exciting to see Walker do cool things that talented basketball players can do but I have to keep myself honest and not get too excited about four games. I mean, remember when the Spurs won four games in a row? They were 8-13 back then. They’re 24-39 now. Those four games weren’t indicative of anything.
We can’t keep getting excited about four-game stretches of good basketball from a player or the team as a whole. Not unless it’s the NBA Finals, anyway.
Having said all of this, good for Lonnie, right!? He’s playing for a contract in San Antonio or somewhere else, and now I’m just upset that I don’t know which one it’ll be.
Where does Lonnie make sense?
The devil on one shoulder is telling me that this will all come crashing down, and even if Walker does parlay some good basketball down the stretch (which, to be very clear, still remains to be seen. I must say again that four games doesn’t mean all that much to me) into a contract with a team that isn’t called the Spurs, they’ll regret the amount of money they invested when Walker turns out to not play basketball in a way that matches the amount of money he’s getting paid to play basketball.
The angel on my other shoulder wants me to believe that Lonnie will play good basketball down the stretch for San Antonio and also sign a team-friendly contract to remain with the Spurs for a few more years.
My question to both angels is: Okay but how many games are the Spurs going to win down the stretch? Because man, I also enjoyed Derrick White playing basketball next to Dejounte Murray, and they didn’t win enough games to keep them together.
If Murray is the future of the Spurs, shouldn’t Walker be held to the same standard as White? And if Walker had been playing as well as White before the trade deadline (and San Antonio were still losing) would either of them be here right now?
My guess is no.
Which also makes me think that Walker won’t be back in San Antonio next year, regardless of how things go over the next 19 games.
Enough nuance!
For fun, here’s a short list of things I’ve been compelled to do as a direct result of watching Lonnie Walker IV play basketball.
Get lost in thought wondering if it’s possible to become a better jumper as a man in his 30s
Slam my head into a wall
Scream, politely
Golf clap
Make my stomach have that feeling where you’re at the top of a roller coaster incline and then you start going down and for a second your stomach just kind of feels like it’s floating but then all of a sudden you feel like it’s going to shoot out of your mouth
Respond to a work email
Forget about responding to a work email
Wonder what would happen if I could go back in time with the knowledge I have today and if I could use that knowledge to somehow make my younger self a freak athlete who, despite maxing out at 6’0, could dunk a basketball
Curse words
Nod politely
Open another beer
…And another one
Say stuff my dad would say if he were watching a basketball game with me when I was a kid, like, “It’s a two way game, you gotta get back on defense.”
Contemplate renting out a gym and a hiring some kids from a local high school production of Peter Pan to hoist me up on the wire they use to make it look like Pan can fly around their high school auditorium except now they’re using it so I can slam dunk a basketball all graceful-like
Thanks for reading, please be kind to each other out there.
In a loss. At home.