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It's happened. Brandan Wright has become self-aware. May God help us all. It'll only be a matter of time before the country finds itself in a struggle of humanity versus machines and the United States becomes a post-apocalyptic wasteland with terminators roaming the streets looking for stray humans...
Wait, you mean Wright isn't some self-defense program that's A.I. turns on its creators and starts nuclear warfare? Phew. You had me worried, Brandan Wright. I thought the cause of your freaky, out-of-this-world athleticism and alley-oops were because of modern technology. Well, that makes these comments not as scary, from Jeff Caplan of ESPNDallas.com:
Brandan Wright is one Mavericks player who hopes he doesn't have to see the Lakers again.
"If we do play them [in the first round], if it goes the way we've been playing this year, I guess I will be a non-factor," Wright said. "But, we'll figure something out. We've got smart people around here."
Hey, at least the kid understands. The Lakers front line is absolutely monstrous and, really, the main reason the Lakers went to three-straight finals, winning two (and that was WITHOUT a healthy Andrew Bynum.) Wright is as slender as they come, which makes him extremely useful in a league that rarely sees too many back to the basket, imposing threats. Other than the Lakers, Magic and Grizzles, many teams just employ smaller, sleeker, athletic big men that Wright can definitely match up with.
As the ESPN story states, Wright barely played on Sunday, and when Bynum checked into the game, he promptly ate up the Mavericks zone defense. Wright missed all three of his shots and grabbed one rebound in his nine minutes of play. (Which was just about as good as Brendan Haywood's 38-minute-5-rebound performance. Blerg.)
Don't get too, discouraged. Wright is getting paid peanuts for putting up a staggering 21.57 PER in just 16.2 minutes per game. That's called value folks.