At 3.9 blocks a night, the third-year center is not just leading the league \u2014 he is lapping it, and opponents have stopped testing the paint entirely.<\/p>
The advanced numbers tell the same story from a different angle. Since the calendar turned, the lineup’s net rating has climbed into the league’s top five, driven almost entirely by transition defense and a sharp cut in turnovers.<\/p>
The medical staff will re-evaluate in two weeks, but the timeline matters less than the structure around it. Minutes restrictions, back-to-back management and a deep rotation give the training staff room to be conservative.<\/p>
The margin for error at this stage of the season is razor thin, and both benches knew it. Every possession in the fourth quarter was contested like a playoff closeout, with coaches burning timeouts early to stop runs before they became avalanches.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At 3.9 blocks a night, the third-year center is not just leading the league \u2014 he is lapping it, and opponents have stopped testing the paint entirely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[21],"class_list":["post-199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","tag-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stepfoxthemes.com\/courtside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stepfoxthemes.com\/courtside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stepfoxthemes.com\/courtside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stepfoxthemes.com\/courtside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stepfoxthemes.com\/courtside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stepfoxthemes.com\/courtside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":290,"href":"https:\/\/stepfoxthemes.com\/courtside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions\/290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stepfoxthemes.com\/courtside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stepfoxthemes.com\/courtside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stepfoxthemes.com\/courtside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stepfoxthemes.com\/courtside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}