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Dirk tactfully sloughs off Tom Heinsohn's Kelly Olynyk comparison
Boston Celtics big man Kelly Olynyk can shoot. He’s hit 42 percent of his three-pointers on the season, nailing 8-12 from that dastardly corner, and he’s hit 19-28 (nearly 68 percent) of his threes in the calendar year of 2016 alone.
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On Monday, Olynyk popped in 5-6 three-pointers yet another tough Boston Celtics loss, this time to the Dallas Mavericks. Dallas, as has been the case since June of 1998, employs a 7-footer the name of Dirk Nowitzki.
In the same game that 7-footer nailed a corner trey in overtime to help put Boston away, part of a 31-point, 11-rebound performance.
All of this came after … well, this hit the airwaves on Friday night:
Tommy on Kelly Olynyk: "He has the potential to be better than Dirk Nowitzki, that's his upper limit."
— CSNCeltics (@csnceltics) January 17, 2016
That’s longtime Boston Celtics color commentator Tommy Heinsohn, speaking on the team’s pregame show, offering up his usual brand of homer-isms. Actually, that’s not even true: I’m a good 15 years into listening to Tommy on League Pass broadcasts, and I’ve never heard him saying something as outrageous as this. And by Heinsohn’s standards, that’s saying a lot.
Following Monday’s contest, Dirk was very, very nice when asked about Heinsohn’s comments. From ESPN Dallas’ Tim MacMahon:
“Yeah, I mean, I like the kid. I'm just not sure about all that. But I really do like him. He's a good shooter. He's improved from year to year, so I do wish him the best. He can be a really good player, but I don't know if his ceiling is all the way up there...he's got a long way to go.”
Kelly Olynyk will turn 25 in a few months. At around the same age, Dirk Nowitzki was already a two-time All-Star, he was on his way toward averaging 25 points in a season – his third consecutive season of over 20 a game. He was also the lead figure on a championship contender, only missing out on a chance to take that year’s Mavericks team to the Finals due to a knee sprain that remains a source of consternation between Mavs owner Mark Cuban and former coach Don Nelson to this day.
Olynyk, meanwhile, has started 29 career games spread out over three seasons and he’s fighting to keep his up and down Celtics in the playoff picture out East.
This is a long way of pointing out that this isn’t fair. To anyone.
Outside of choices in hair length and that similarly-styled complexion that unfortunately always seems to elbow its way into these sorts of ridiculous comparisons, it’s just not a sane comparison. At his current pace, Olynyk would need nearly 2900 more NBA games to catch up to Dirk Nowitzki’s sixth spot in the all-time NBA scoring list. And despite their similar height, their positions are vastly different: Dirk was drafted as a small forward, whereas Olynyk has always been regarded as a center.
A fantastic shooting center, to be absolutely sure, but a pivotman. A pivotman that can nearly do this to Dirk …
… but a pivotman.
It’s simply not appropriate to pair Kelly Olynyk, at any age, with such comparisons. We’d stop short of calling them expectations, as Tom Heinsohn didn’t exactly come out and call Olynyk “the next Dirk,” but it stinks for Olynyk to have to answer to these sorts of things, and it certainly stinks for Dirk Nowitzki (as was the case with Larry Bird, in decades prior) to have to remain tactful in his comments every time a sweet-shooting big man of a certain skin tone comes along.
The Celtics would be more than pleased with The Next Channing Frye, or The Next Sam Perkins. Let’s not get out of hand, here, even if it was a Friday night.
Kudos to Kelly Olynyk for his breakout year, and to Dirk Nowitzki for handling this the right way.
Just as Rick Barry would have.
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is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
