The Lance Stephenson 10-day contract: Day 3
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 and Day 2 here.
Day 3: This, this was not Lance Stephenson’s best game. He played 12 minutes and missed all three of his shots from the field. The Timberwolves were outscored by 19 points while he was on the floor, and lost to the New Orleans Pelicans by 16. Now, Lance wasn’t responsible for Anthony Davis — who finished with a 42 points and 13 rebounds, on 16-of-22 shooting. And he wasn’t on the floor for the bulk of Jrue Holiday’s impressive 25 points and 12 assists. Numbers never tell the whole story, but in the case of Lance Stephenson’s performance on Day 3, they offer a pretty handy set of cliff notes.
The Timberwolves’ defense and effort was pretty poor collectively in and Tom Thibodeau was pretty much throwing blanket criticism at his roster at the game. Lance was not helpful, but maybe Thibodeau will be distracted with his anger at all the other more experienced players on this roster who should know better.
Next: Why is T.J. McConnell so darn clutch?
Day 3 is not going to win Lance a job, but Day 1 was not so bad and that’s not so long ago. Day 5 and a game against the Chicago Bulls offers another chance to clean that slate. Right now the mission is to keep grinding, get better every day (or at least for the next seven days) and get that guaranteed money.