Baby's Growing

At one point in the Cavs game last night, Davis was facing his defender on the left wing, and the defender had his arm out touching Davis' body. Suddenly, Baby pulled the old "veteran move" -- raised his arms up quickly for a shot, which is an automatic in-the-act whistle if there is ANY contact between the arms of the shooter and the defender. He hit his shot, and got the And-1. As he walked to take his position at the FT line, Baby motioned to the bench, nodded and grinned happily. A shot of KG showed him grinning ear to ear, absolutely LOVING the moment, and giving Baby his props.

Apparently, this was the first time Davis had ever successfully done that quick-shot vet move. True, it's usually shooters who do it. Veteran shooters. So I guess that means that Baby has graduated into a 'real shooter', and maybe a near-veteran one at that.

That 'vet move' is probably a lot harder to get than it looks. For one thing, the defender has to be wary enough of your offensive skills to WANT to put his hand on you, in the first place. They're not going to do it to, say... Semih, or Perk. The fact that Baby was able to pull this off can be construed, in part, as indicating that he may have arrived in the eyes of other teams' defenders.

Whatever else it may mean, I don't know. I'm just glad he's where he is. Our Baby's settling into his (expanded) role, and after some hard times earlier this season, he's now doing his job most days exactly the way the team needs him to do it. Great stuff.

And one more reason to believe that this team is coming together on schedule. I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that I think they'll reach their absolute peak, oh I dunno... around mid-April through June, or so?