Game 47 Dirkie: Tim Hardaway Jr 41.38% (not definitive enough bc haters)

[DanSchwartzgan]

The elephant in the room is that the true winner of the Dirkie is Jonathan Isaac for having a minutes restriction, but kudos to Lively, THJ, Hardy, Luka, and even Kidd for taking advantage of it.

You beat me to it.  His D on Luka was suffocating.  If Orlando ever had him at full strength...

Got to see this one in person.  Luka's 45 kind of snuck up on you as did the assists.  

Lively's most impressive stat, in a night of impressive stats, was 40 minutes.  He didn't get his 4th and 5th foul until the last 3 minutes.

I'm tempted to vote for THJ.  On a night when Irving was missing and Green and Williams had nothing, we certainly needed the offense.  He also made one of my favorite plays.  It doesn't look that fantastic in the highlights...I looked.  But live, that alley-oop to Hardy at full speed was really impressive.  But, I have two bones to pick with him.  Early in the second when Hardy had scored a ton, Timmy decided to go shot hunting.  He couldn't stand that the young fella was on a heater and he was going to put up a shot no matter what.  Yep, contested pull-up 3....clang.  There was a time in the second half where he and Hardy were in front of the Orlando bench and both had gotten a little loose with the ball.  Hardy had it and was about to drive and Tim gave him the "give me the damn ball" hand motion.  This time he made a big 3 and all was quickly forgiven.  My other issue with THJ was  his play in that zone we ran in the first half.  He and GWill and Luka all got lost at times and Orlando killed it.  It was super sloppy and I was amazed we stuck with it and executed it so well in the second half.

But, I went with Hardy.  As others have said, this game would have gotten away from us if not for him (it almost did anyway).  He looked so comfortable.  I loved the assists inside.  Hitting shots always makes a player look good, but I thought he made a lot of good decisions on drives and it all felt like it was in rhythm.

I will give Maxi an honorable mention.  The D just worked when he was in the game and it didn't seem to work as well when GWill was in the game.  I told my son before the game that our challenge will be beating Orlando's bench.  They are usually strong.  Our bench was basically Hardy and Maxi and we won the minutes when they were in.  Hardy's contribution was obvious, but Maxi was part of it and did it with a 1-1-1 line.