Zach LaVine Proving He's More Than Just a Slam Dunk King
There's nothing wrong with being an NBA Slam Dunk Contest champion.
That distinction seemed to suit Michael Jordan and Dominique Wilkins just fine. Kobe Bryant and Vince Carter wore it well in the late 1990s. Since the turn of the century, Dwight Howard, Blake Griffin and John Wall haven't had much trouble with it since using that stage to launch their already promising careers into the stratosphere.
But for every MJ, there's a Harold Miner. For every Kobe, a Desmond Mason. For every Dwight, a Gerald Green.
Zach LaVine might never reach the heights of superstardom achieved by the former group, but that doesn't mean this year's Slam Dunk Contest champion is doomed to fade after shining so brightly during All-Star Weekend, as those among the latter group did and have.
Not to take anything away from LaVine's Valentine's Day dunk-a-thon at Barclays Center or his zeal for blowing away the field in a competition he'd long dreamt of dominating.
As Grantland's Jason Concepcion wrote: "One of the many difficulties in staging the dunk contest in recent years has been that, in general, the league's best and most athletic players want to be known for something more than just dunking. LaVine has no such qualms. He has been waiting for this his whole life."
LaVine is no longer waiting for that moment. Now, he's moving on to bigger and better things in his burgeoning NBA career.
The rookie out of UCLA has made that clear of late. With Mo Williams in Charlotte and Minnesota's remaining guard rotation beset by injuries, LaVine has seen his workload expand back to where it was when the calendar first flipped to 2015. Over his last seven games (six starts), LaVine has averaged 17 points in 36.2 minutes per game.
To be sure, LaVine's dunks have been beautiful and plentiful during this stretch.
But so, too, have some of the other aspects of his game—chief among them his three-point shooting. In fact, LaVine has knocked down a sizzling 53.6 percent of his threes since Ricky Rubio returned to the pine with a sore right ankle.
That hot streak includes a pair of clutch treys from LaVine that helped the T-Wolves force overtime against the Gordon Hayward-less Utah Jazz on March 23.
"If you all know me, I have the confidence to take and make any shot. That's my mentality," LaVine said afterward, per The Associated Press' Kareem Copeland. "That's why I come in knocking them down."
LaVine finished with a game-high 27 points. More importantly, Minnesota came away with an impressive 106-104 win over one of the NBA's best post-All-Star squads.
This just four days after LaVine scored six points in overtime (among his 20 total) to beat the New York Knicks, pitiful though they may be, at Madison Square Garden. His 20 points against the Brooklyn Nets weren't half-bad either.
To be sure, LaVine has been far from perfect during his latest stint as a starter. He's averaged more turnovers (4.6) than assists (four), and the T-Wolves have won just twice in seven tries.
On the whole, though, LaVine's most recent results represent a massive step forward from where he was the last time he started regularly for Flip Saunders.
Between Nov. 8 and Jan. 3, LaVine started 20 times as Rubio's replacement in 27 games. LaVine did a better job of taking care of the ball in that stretch (four assists, 2.6 turnovers) than he has of late, but his grasp of scoring at the NBA level that early on (9.3 points on 40.8 percent shooting, 25 percent from three) wasn't what it is today.
That's to be expected from a player as young and raw as LaVine was and still is. His first pro start came in Minnesota's sixth game of the 2014-15 season. By then, LaVine had already racked up three DNPs.
To be clear, it's not as though Saunders simply handed LaVine the keys to the T-Wolves' soccer-mom van. Williams, a productive and well-respected veteran in his 12th pro season, was active when Rubio first went down. Saunders could've called upon Williams to step in right away, but he must've seen something from LaVine to suggest he'd be ready for the job.
"You can learn enough sitting on the bench as you can on the floor sometimes," Saunders said in December. "I'm a firm believer that you get what you earn. We're not going to give you something, so that's how we approach it."
It's not as though LaVine had a lot of time to impress his coach either. About four months before standing in for Rubio, LaVine was just another teenager hoping to become an instant millionaire.
He got his wish, courtesy of the Timberwolves, who spent the 13th pick in the 2014 draft—considered, at the time, to be among the best in recent memory—on a baby-faced Seattleite whose lone collegiate campaign was nothing if not erratic.
While most of this year's rookie class has slumped, LaVine has found new life. Despite being so slight of frame (6'5", 180 lbs) and so new to the best basketball league in the world, he's busted through the proverbial rookie wall and emerged on the other side looking more confident and more capable of becoming something greater than another short-lived slam dunk specialist.
And, if LaVine's shot stays sharp and his passing and ball-handling continue to improve, even the sky might have a hard time keeping this high-flier from busting right through his considerable ceiling.
Josh Martin covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter.
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