When the regular season is nearing its end, teams who are out of playoffs or already clinched their playoff spot always take the chance to put their role players and bench warmers under the spotlight and try them out with more minutes. With the end of this regular season, we bring you the best role players and bench warmers who got their chance under the spotlight.
Oklahoma City Thunder
Firstly, we have to mention Oklahoma City, with the half of the team being on the injury report, all they did was try out new players for quite some time now. There are so many players from the Thunder that we’ve just put them all together. Jaylen Hoard, small forward, has played only 7 games this season, 6 of them being in the end of the season and he’s been killing it in those 6 games. He averaged 17.2 points, 13.7 rebounds, and 1 steal per game during those 6 games and had a double-double in 4 of them. Next up is Zavier Simpson, another small forward who played only in the last 4 games of the season and averaged 11 points, 5.3 rebounds, 7.5 assists, 1.3 steals, and 1 block per game. Georgios Kalaitzakis, yet another small forward who, same as Zavier, played only four games for OKC at the end of the season but proved to be good averaging 17.5 points, 2 threes, 3.3 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2.5 steals per game. As an honorable mention, we have Olivier Sarr, a very flexible player who can play any position from shooting guard to center, who got waived before the end of the season but showed that he can play in the NBA so we might see him as a role player in some team next season.
Ignas Brazdeikis, Orlando Magic
Lithuanian forward played 42 games this season but got a significant boost in minutes over the course of last 6 games. In those 6 games, Brazdeikis averaged 16 points with 2 threes on a fantastic 60 FG% and 4.7 rebounds.
Sandro Mamukelashvili, Milwaukee Bucks
Mamukelashvili played 41 games this season and averaged just 9.9 minutes per game, but in the last game of the regular season, he got himself a double-double. Played 43 minutes scored 28 points with 2 threes on 56 FG%, 13 rebounds, 4 assists, and snatched 1 steal.
Los Angeles Lakers
With the Lakers officially out of the play-in tournament and the Lakers 360 trio (James, Davis and Westbrook) not playing, Malik Monk and Austin Reaves got their chances to show off in the last game of the regular season. Reaves scored a triple-double of 31 points, 16 rebounds, and 10 assists, and added 2 steals and 1 block on top of that. Malik Monk had a very solid performance with 41 points on 56 FG% with 7 threes.
