So obviously Wembanyama played in MSG tonight. I made no special effort to look up info about the game, but I was bombarded by three negative stories out of nowhere. He said MSG “isn’t as big as I expected,” which was actually a cutoff quote, where he finished by saying the energy is still there. The Knicks fans chanted “overrated” at him. And even the House of Highlights video is titled "The MSG lights were too bright for Wemby "
When I saw that, I thought he must have had a terrible game. His stats?
14 points, 9 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 block. In 30 minutes.
In other words, perfectly fine. His jump shot was off (28%), but guess what… the game before that he shot 25%. And had 13 points and 10 rebounds. And no one savaged him. Because it wasn’t in toxic town.
The NY media and fans also treat Julius Randle like garbage too. I hate Kyrie Irving, for example (I called him Kevin Snake & Flake), but Kyrie is an outright Anti-Semite. Is Randle that bad of a human being? They weren’t much easier on Ewing.
We had a thread a couple years ago where we looked at the stats and found that Ben Simmons actually took a nosedive in his free throw rate and percentage in front of Philly fans, apparently due to their heckling. So treating your players like crap on their homecourt can have a negative effect. And a lot of guys won’t want to sign with your team and walk into that environment. Especially not kids who are just starting in the NBA and who are likely superstars of the future, and who seem to be decent people, who are getting a bad taste in their mouth from the moment they get near your team for the first time.
Wemby had a bad night, his stats were padded towards the end of the game, he is allowed to have a bag game nobody is perfect. Maybe it humbled him being in the worlds most famous arena.
Say what you will about us and our city, but we have a huge fan base and if you perform you will be king of the city. The fact that Randle went from MIP/all nba/allstar to being booed the next season, then coming back to be both an all star and all nba player says quite a bit about his character. He did not back down, he came back and proved himself. I give him respect for that.
He is sick of the fans and turned on them himself.
A player who wins in New York would be king of the city, but you can’t attract players because people don’t want to be in that environment in the first place.