What’s Tyler Ulis’ whole deal?

I was introduced to Tyler Ulis, the young Suns point guard, in the usual way. With Karl-Anthony Towns, Russell Westbrook, and Rudy Gobert as the nucleus of my salary-cap keeper league, I was well on my way to a second straight league championship, when all of a sudden Tyler Ulis showed up.

Let me tell you something you definitely don’t know about Ulis that I, of course, do: in April of last year, through six games, he averaged 20.7 points, 6.8 assists, and 3.8 rebounds while shooting 48.5 percent from the field and hitting 1.7 3-pointers a game. On April 2, against Houston, he dropped a 34-9-9 line. On the last night of the season, he went for 27-6-4. He had a 20-10 game and a 20-6-5 game.

And you can go back, if you want to. Tyler Ulis averaged almost 8 assists per game last March (7.9), with only 1.9 TOs a game. And he did that pretty much in his first ever significant NBA minutes. Prior to Mar. 1, he had played more than twenty minutes twice in his career. In March, he averaged 33 and contributed everywhere except behind the 3-point arc (where his 12.9 percent shooting was a little outside the acceptable range. He got five more minutes per game the next month and responded, in addition to the numbers above, with a .485/.370/.783 shooting line.

I mean, listen, I don’t know anything about the NBA — the Stepback staff keeps me around as a kind of mascot, or long-form experiment in how long it would take five hundred mes to write the complete works of Shakespeare, but doesn’t that sound like a really good young player? Ulis is 21 years old, which is something he has in common with me when I was 21.

He was an early second round pick (No. 34), going two spots ahead of last year’s ROY Malcolm Brogdon, and four ahead of last year’s Jordan Bell, Patrick McCaw. He went to Kentucky, made the SEC All-Freshman team, and was a first team All-American. He was even the SEC defensive player of the year. His problem is that he’s short, 5-foot-10, but then again, so is Isaiah Thomas. And has anyone seen the two of them in the same room?

For whatever reason, the Phoenix Suns, who need all the help they can get, don’t quite see it yet with Ulis and have brought in Mike James to jockey with him for minutes. James, 27, is a veteran European player, though this is his first year in the league. Thus far, he’s averaged 22.0 points per 100 possessions to Ulis’ 19.5, and has slightly better numbers all around. Ulis’ 3-point shooting is again a mess — he’s made one, so far this season. I bet it was nice.

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But doesn’t it just seem like if you had a sophomore point guard, twenty-one years old, who was capable of averaging roughly 21-7, with 4 boards, and apparently some defensive acumen, you’d want to kick the tires on that one a little bit? He hasn’t set the league on fire yet this season, but neither has been bad. He continues to contribute across the board. Should we be talking about him more?

I did, ultimately, win last year’s fantasy basketball league championship, thanks for asking. But it was a near thing, and I don’t like to sweat. Which makes me unlike Tyler Ulis, as does the fact that I’m actually taller than he is. But if I were the Suns, I think I’d be finding a way to take a longer look.