Press Break: Dante Exum is Good Now, For Some Reason
Plus: a Scoot redux, and how trying to be more sincere caused me to like Jimmy Butler.
Welcome to Press Break! Every Monday, I break down five players/games/stats/stories that intrigued me from the week prior. Take your shoes off, stay a while. Let’s talk hoops.
1. Dante Exum Was Just Two Years Away From Being Two Years Away From Being Two Years Away From Being Two Years Away
When players become “busts” then go overseas for a few years or inhabit the metaphorical end-of-bench role (the seats are just as comfy down there) on middling NBA teams, then somehow transform themselves back into productive NBA players— I always wonder how honest they were with themselves when things looked bleak.
Like, when Dennis Smith Jr got cut from a tanking Blazers team in 2021-22, did he think “Oh man that stinks, on to the next opportunity” or something closer to “Well, okay, guess I’m done in the NBA?” Because in order to actually make it back to the NBA—which Smith Jr did— he probably had to be a little delusional, right? To tell himself that when he really gets an opportunity, things will work out?
We’ve seen a few lottery “busts” grind their way back into the league recently. This year, 2014 fifth overall pick Dante Exum has done it. Against all odds, he’s become a productive NBA starter. On a good team, no less.
Exum played in the NBA from 2014 to 2021 and was never, ever good. (Sorry Dante, you’re good now so it’s okay.) How he even got an NBA tryout after spending the past two seasons in Serbia… I don’t know. But he did, and after a Kyrie Irving injury, he’s starting in Dallas… and thriving! Exum has started six games, playing incredibly well in five of them, scoring 23, 16, 26, 14, 18. He’s shooting 80% at the rim and 43% from deep. He’s taking people off the dribble consistently. He looks brand new. Dallas is 16-9 and 5-1 when he starts. Why not.
He couldn’t always do this, right? This is new?
Good for you, Dante. Still waiting on the Shabazz Muhammad comeback arc.
2. Scoot Henderson is a TBP Subscriber
A week ago, I said about Scoot Henderson’s struggles:
My solution? Buck all traditional rookie wisdom. Don’t slow down, speed up. Don’t think more, think less. Be a little reckless. No thoughts. Just fast.
Not gonna lie, I think he read that. Because in the four games since I published that… Scoot has sped up.
In real time, you can see Scoot remember that he’s faster than the guy standing in front of him and just… run right past him.
He hasn’t been perfect, and the growth has been slow. But it’s definitely been growth: past four games, Scoot is averaging 17.2 points, 5 assists, and 46.4% shooting. More dunks. More speed.
Also, if this becomes a viable shot for Scoot… fun things are coming:
I haven’t lost an ounce of hope.
3. Jalen Green, Let Me Love You
If you watched only Jalen Green’s highlights, you’d probably think he’s an All-NBA player. From last week:
If you watched only Jalen Green’s lowlights, you’d think he held Adam Silver at gunpoint and forced the commissioner to give him an NBA contract despite never playing organized basketball in his life.
Jalen Green started last week by scoring 40 points on 14/29 shooting in two games for Houston.
In the next three games combined, he shot 8/34 and scored 29 points.
He’s so frustratingly talented. He truly glides on the floor, has one of the fastest first steps I’ve ever seen, and can make any shot, anywhere. He’s also woefully inefficient, turnover prone and makes poor decisions. He’s also the second-leading scorer on a playoff-caliber Rockets team. What does all that add up to? Something good?
I. Don’t. Know.
Is this the ceiling for Green? Is that fine? If he gets 2% better, he could be an All-Star. If he gets 2% worse he might be out of the league. A confounding basketball player who I will never, ever stop believing in.
4. Embracing Sincerity Caused Me to Start Liking Jimmy Butler
Note: This is a long one that only loosely relates to basketball. I won’t blame you for tapping out now.
I don’t know Jimmy Butler personally. But based on the numerous stories published about him during his career… he kind of sounds like an asshole.
I think he expects others to do things they’re not capable of. I think he’s obsessed with success, but in a more dangerous way than fun. I think he’s outrageous and delusional.
I also recently started cheering for him. Does that sound contradictory? Probably. Let me explain. To do so, we gotta zoom way out.
Abandoning sincerity is an alluring proposition. With the state of uhhhh everything being in crisis, allowing irony and insincerity to control your life appears— on the surface— to be an easy way to avoid grief, fear, and hopelessness.
But the deeper you fall into the hole of irony— the more you dismiss hardship (whether your own or others) — the harder it then becomes to feel joy, relief, or hope when things do work out. You become self-satisfied, smug, convinced that being genuine is embarrassing, which leads to a stifling of your emotions. When you do that, you receive news in one of two ways:
Something terrible happened? Ha—if you didn’t expect that, you’re a moron. Of course terrible things happened, because things are terrible! What, you’re actually sad? Grow up!
Something good happened? Well, something terrible is coming soon, so you’re kinda pathetic for finding joy in this stroke of positivity. You’re genuinely finding happiness right now? Ha! Grow up!
Good and bad news kind of mash together. Why does it matter what happened if your reaction (“ha, whatever”) is going to be the same regardless? When you diminish your spectrum of feelings, you limit how many feelings you can actually feel.
This insincerity is tough to escape from because it isolates you, and that isolation only leads you further down the rabbit hole.
You guys right now:
Okay, sorry. This is still a basketball Substack, I promise. Just bear with me.
I realized just how deeply I had buried myself in the hole of nonchalance when I started to agree with people whose tweets all had 158 retweets and 4,100 likes. If you want to find the worst opinions on the internet, look for the people whose tweets have 158 retweets and 4,100 likes. Trust me.
Whether basketball or politics or something else (those are just the two things I know for sure exist in this world) I realized that, no matter what news or information was presented to me, I tried my very best to find the reason it was silly or benign or meaningless or deserving of disdain. I told myself that I cared about things, loved things, enjoyed things… but then didn’t actually let myself care for, love, or enjoy anything at all.
That’s not a good way to live!
Recently, I’ve been making a concerted effort to be more genuine, more sincere with my words and actions. I’m making myself feel all my feelings. Throughout this reflection, I have started to appreciate Jimmy Butler.
I don’t know when I started cheering against Jimmy Butler. I thought he was cool in Chicago, so it must have been in Minnesota when he was playing against the Wolves starters with third-string guys. I started cheering against him, because, simply, I thought he was annoying. Don’t get me wrong— Jimmy Butler is annoying. The face of the metaphysical “Heat Culture,” seller of $20 cups of coffee, 3:30 AM worker-outer— all of those things are annoying.
But it’s also pretty obvious that Butler gives a shit about everything he does. He cares— I think someone who wins as much as he does has to care. He means what he says, and he’s sincere in his aspirations, maybe moreso than anyone else in the NBA.
Jimmy Butler believes in himself. Maybe too much, actually, but the belief is genuine. I think he wants to believe in everyone around him, too, he just doesn’t know how to express it. Cheers to that.
5. I’m Still Mad About Saltburn
Going to the movies is perhaps my favorite activity in the world. Seeing Saltburn last week almost single-handedly changed that.
Rarely does a movie rouse much vitriol inside of me, but after watching Saltburn I legitimately believe the devil exists. Not because of anything I actually saw in the movie, but because a movie that stupid and full of itself can exist on God’s green Earth.
With every second that passed, I became actively angrier in my seat, shoveling literal fistfulls of popcorn into my mouth. I’m not sure what my face looked like but I think it was probably a combination of this:
and this:
We can never let someone named Emerald give their opinion on class relations ever again. We must be better.
As always, thank you for reading. Tell ya friends, family, coworkers, enemies, lovers about TBP!
Talk soon.