Deni Avdija Kicks Mondo Ass Now

Deni Avdija, in his sixth NBA season and second with the Portland Trail Blazers, is suddenly a monster. Sunday night he put up a crazy triple-double against the invulnerable Oklahoma City Thunder, in an encouragingly narrow and competitive home loss for the Blazers. Avdija scored 31 points on just 14 shots, pulled down 19 rebounds, dished 10 assists against just a single turnover, and finished plus-four in 37 minutes of floor-time. It's not even that weird a line for Avdija, who was once considered a draft near-bust by the stewards of the Toiletburg Toilet Creatures. Avdija has topped 25 points in 12 of Portland's 20 games; he's got six double-doubles and a couple of triple-doubles; he leads the Blazers in scoring, is second in usage, rebounds, and assists, and is third in blocks; and he's doing it all on mighty 62-percent true shooting. He is producing like a superstar.

Avdija seemed to figure something out right at the tail end of his time with his first NBA team, an outfit which shall go unnamed in this space. He's tall and long, and fast and strong, and after a couple of wasted seasons playing glorified spectator around that abominable franchise's trumped-up alpha dogs, Avdija realized that if he gets the ball at one end of the court—say, if he grabs a defensive rebound—and just immediately tears ass toward the other end, good things will happen often enough that no one will yell at him for trying. That was his first brush with NBA success, and it was fun, and his teammates started doing a little motorcycle dance to encourage him forward. As is the case with lots of other fast young guys, eventually Avdija picked up some counters, little secondary ways of broadening the advantages that come from being faster in a straight line than other people his size. Now he's got moves on moves, and has become something of an offense unto himself: Per Cleaning The Glass, the Blazers are a whopping 16 points better per 100 possessions with Avdija on the floor, which ranks in the NBA's 98th percentile, within touching distance of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Nikola Jokic, winners of six of the last seven NBA MVP awards.