The Khoub Report, Vol. 2

It is inexcusable how long it has taken to post the second Koub Report, but I'm here to rectify things. In case you didn't read the first one and don't want to click on the link (hey, I don't blame you - the whole world is one big link now and sometimes it just gets tiring), this is - as far as I know - the only blog in existence that devotes ongoing posts to Denver's Yakhouba Diawara.

Ostensibly, this running post is about giving Khoub some love because his time at Pepperdine overlapped with mine. On a deeper level though, the Insider Blog is celebrating the bizarre turn of events that led a WCC power forward that couldn't defend a chair and went 0-for-17 in his final college game to cracking the Denver Nuggets' rotation as a defensive stopper and three-point shooter. I'm still not sure how this is possible. That said, Khoub is a great guy, so I'm eager to throw a little attention his way.

The good news is that Khoub has recently been providing both of the aforementioned services - defense and threes - on a regular basis. Part of the reason I hadn't posted a Khoub report since his first game was that he was playing kind of poorly (although the real reason is that my apartment building is archaic and cheap and refuses to pay for the wiring necessary for Comcast to provide me with League Pass, so I never see any Nuggets games). Fortunately, that has changed.

In Denver's first seven games, Khoub went 0-for-8 from three and scored just eight points while racking up two DNP's and playing just 11 seconds in another contest. Then he hit three big triples against the Raptors and seemed to find the range a little bit. In the last nine games he is 14-for-38 from downtown (a respectable 37%) with 10 steals and 70 points. He's still not getting big minutes backing up J.R. Smith and Melo, but when he does get in the game, he's making an impact.

Grade (for the past nine games): B+