2024, as for most other years this decade, was quite a dark season for our Brooklyn Nets. Mikal Bridges stock dropped like a bomb after his promising first half-season in 2023. Ben Simmons stunk up the Barclays Center with an astounding 6.1-point average in his 15 games and another 82 games had flown by without the sweet release of home playoff game. Life as a Nets fan was pretty bleak but in the midst of what seemed like timeless turmoil, we were able to witness the birth of what we initially thought to be the next best NBA scorer – arriving in the shape of 22-year-old Cam Thomas. Thomas was setting the Barclays Center alight, traipsing effortlessly to a career high 22.5PPG average, surprising teams with his expansive offensive arsenal, ranging from deep threes, contested midranges and an impressive array of acrobatic finishes around the basket. In Cam Thomas, Brooklyn seemingly had a talent to vest their waning basket-balling interest in, a player who could carry the weight of a restless franchise who were looking for the next superstar to take the reins.

All these expectations make it so much more confusing that in 2026, just 2 years removed from his break out, Cam Thomas now finds himself without a team. A generational offensive talent who finds himself inevitably bound to the hope of a 10-day contract. But he’s not an isolated case. Cam Whitmore, Lonnie Walker IV and Jordan Clarkson are all players whose recent years have been marred by roster instability and inconsistent play. The microwave bench scorer in the 2010s used to be a valued archetype in the league, yet 10 years later, its impact at best is mediocre, at worst a sub-par offensive tool that forms the heartbeat of a team’s offensive production. So, why is it that in the bloodbath of offensive revolution and rule changes that the score-first guard is an archetype that continues to reproduce itself despite its diminishing level of impact?

Status and Social Esteem

8 points. 7 rebounds. 10 assists, 1 for the game winner. Efficient. Tidy. Not a game to be screaming up and down the hard courts about, but one to be proud of. One that the teachers and coaches would appreciate. But amongst your friends? Yet that praise isn’t gonna come. Never. The admiration goes to the guy with 34 points and the game-winning three. Explosive. Unstoppable. He really made the difference to the final score. At least that’s what they’re going to be saying.

See, to be the face of success is to live in the paradise of incessant adulation and admiration. You’re the hope for the fans, the reason they save up for tickets. The nectar of that fame is beautiful when you’re the star of your high school team, when you’re the freshman sensation in college. But then you’re in the league and now you’ve got 449 other people who tasted the same heights that you have. Too many cooks but not enough sous-chefs. Not enough cleaners, not enough food runners. Your system isn’t going to work if everyone is in the belief that they’re #1.

Bourdieu talks about this idea in Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. The clothes you wear, the songs you listen to, the places you eat at. They all exist to distinguish yourself, to set yourself apart from others, all for the sake of moral and societal superiority. I am better because my clothes are more expensive because my culinary tastes are more measured. Correct for those who believe it but ultimately flawed.

The ability to make contested threes doesn’t make you more valuable than a floor general because your style of play is more “eye-catching”, nor does your flashy lay-up package make you more enticing a player than someone who can guard 1-5. What it did give you was a self-indulged social distinction, fostered by the administration of status given by those who are uneducated and uninformed.

The NBA operates in this intersection between self-expression and substance, where the superiority that’s been fostered within players from their youth is required to be neutered in pursuit of team success that is prioritised first and foremost. The league for most necessitates concession and acquiescence, concepts foreign to players adjusted to assertiveness and self-importance, leaving young players stuck in the cross-section of exploring their path as a star player or diminishing their own potential for the sake of compliance.

More movement, less iso-ball

In and amidst their period of frustrating dominance, Steve Kerr’s Warriors proceeded to set the standard for modern offenses and the “championship DNA” in our league. They revolutionised modern offenses with their constant off-ball actions and increased 3PT rates, zipping the ball from player to player with a healthy mix of post splits, pin downs and elevator screen plays. It’s no longer enough to just camp on the wing and stay ready to shoot. You need to move off the ball, be comfortable as a ballhandler and the roll man. The new era of offenses has naturally given birth to a new era of defenses too. A paint-sitting big simply doesn’t have the value it used to. You need to be mobile, you need to have the capacity to guard in the open court, at the very least not get embarrassed, and these supposed 3&D wings have to be more comfortable guarding bigs now than they ever were before.

All these factors have increased the demand and floor for what the modern NBA player is supposed to be capable of. Players can no longer fill their archetypal roles; 3&D players can no longer just spot up in the corner and be the POA defender for every star player. They need to learn how to play in the flow of a positionless offense. Can’t make a skip pass? Say goodbye to that £10m a year contract and say hello to the vet minimum. And I hope the pass-first point guards and the rim protector back-up bigs don’t think it doesn’t apply to them either.

It’s no longer enough to just fill a role, to have a specific purpose that cashes your cheque. You need to be malleable, you need to be versatile, and most importantly, you need to be teachable.

The Required Standard

Microwave scorers off the bench fit the winning blueprint less now than ever. Coaches can’t handle the frigidity and predictability of their offensive sets, to see players dribble the air out of a ball just to pass it because they don’t want to mess up their field goal percentage. And who can blame them? A 15ppg average doesn’t mean anything if the remaining 4 players on the court shoot terribly because they touch the ball once every 3 minutes.

The game requires sensitivity. It requires a collective effort, an admission of forfeiture. A big man will find it easy, leaving his scoring output in the hands of his point guard is half his responsibility. A wing won’t mind touching the ball less if he knows that his two lead guards will create advantages for him. But the microwave scorer? He’ll struggle the most, because for him it’s not just the loss of touches. For him, it’s the loss of ego, acclaim, and idolisation. The 34 points on the hardcourts earned you the respect of your friends, but the fantasisation of it will inevitably rob you of your career.