The Lance Stephenson 10-day contract: Day 2
By Ian Levy
Lance Stephenson is back in the NBA, proud owner of a 10-day contract from the Minnesota Timberwolves. However, this is a tenuous toehold. In two weeks, he could be on the road to redemption or he could be on a plane to China. Since we don’t know how many more days of NBA Lance Stephenson we have, each must be treated as a precious snowflake. Catch up on Day 1 here.
Day 2: The Timberwolves were off yesterday and host the New Orleans Pelicans tonight, so one would assume that Stephenson spent the day in frenetic, sweat-soaked preparation. (As a brief aside, I’m a pretty sweaty dude by nature but I have the feeling Lance is in a class all by himself, going through multiple t-shirts a day. You can’t have that much internal fire and keep your core temperature down without a little sweat.) I imagine Lance at the Timberwolves practice facility extra early, honing his Rafer Alston handles on an empty court, draining pull-up jumpers from the elbow in the grill of imaginary defenders, blowing in the ear of Nemanja Bjelica as he tries to lace up his high-tops.
Lance is between a rock and a hard place, although to be fair he kind of lives in that space all the time. Minnesota has been abundantly clear that it is Lance’s play and his attitude (restraint) off the court that can keep him in town beyond these 10 days. Lance does intensity and focus as well as anyone but it comes with a requisite helping of chaos. Lance is his own rock and his own hard place.
The goal is to impress with intensity while staying inside a line that he has always had a hard time seeing. Everyone may get a giggle out of blowing in Bjelica’s ear, but letting his delicious swagger wash over Andrew Wiggins or Karl-Anthony Towns in practice may be a bridge too far. The best thing for Lance is to quietly go about the business of working hard for his new time. But his business is almost never quiet, it’s the Dirty Dozen Brass Band in a riff-off with the Treblemakers.
Whatever Lance did yesterday, we didn’t hear about it which is probably a good sign that it was quiet enough.
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Tonight Lance gets to see some familiar faces. He played six games this season before tearing his groin and being released. Time to show off that healthy groin (metaphorically). Two days down. Eight more to go.