"At that time, except for the Lakers, no team seriously considered signing me, which hit me hard..."
In a media interview, when Malik-Munch said this, emotions rose to his head, and his eyes shone with a sparkle.
After being selected by the Hornets with the 11th pick in the first round in 2017, Munch made his wish on the NBA stage.
Although it is a high-ranking show, but in the past 4 years, Munch has rarely gotten ahead in Joe's lineup, the Queen Bee Walker is gone, Rozier is coming, and in 2020, the Hornets also brought three goals with a probing stick, and the team's defender lineup was suddenly overcrowded.
In 4 years, he played more than 200 games, only 1 started game, and averaged only 13 minutes to 20 minutes per game. Munch has been waiting, but has been teetering on the edge of rotation.
The brightest period of his career was November 16, 2019, when he saw the blood-sealed throat of the sentinel kill!
In that game, Munch acted as a substitute, shooting 8-of-12, scoring 19 points and 4 boards, plus-minus +23 the highest in the game.
Of course, the highlights are exciting and short-lived, and people are more accustomed to describing Munch in short-lived than praise.
But the ambitious Munch is not willing to become a passer-by in the eyes of fans, after all, he is only a 23-year-old young man, and he also has the dream of winning a big contract.
After a few years of muddled up in the Hornets, Munch chose to get out of the way, and after the Hornets shot a 40.1 percent three-point shooting percentage in their final season, the Lakers also targeted him. In the end, Munch also joined Los Angeles on a one-point base salary contract.
In his view, the Lakers were the most sincere team at that time, and Charlotte's exposure compared with Los Angeles, is not worth mentioning at all, the lack of young sunset red team in order to inject vitality, fully able to meet Munch's appearance needs.
One shot right! After a short run-in period, Munch began to use his shooter qualities to build a battery for the Lakers.
In recent games, Munch's performance, although not explosive, has been quite stable:
Yesterday against the Timberwolves, 8-of-14 shooting, 9-of-3-3 points, 4-22 points; turning forward, against the Blazers, 6-of-11 shooting, 2-18 points on 5 three-point range; against the Grizzlies, 6-of-9, 2-15 points on 5 three-point range; against the Rockets, 7-of-14 shooting, 3-25 points on 7-of-7 three-pointers; against the Nets, 8-of-13 shooting, 3-20 points from 7-of-3-3...
In the last 5 games, he has averaged 20 points per game, and his outside shooting rate is as high as 42.4%;
In the absence of Thick Brow due to injury, Wei Shao constantly buried mistakes, Munch is undoubtedly the most reliable scoring weapon around Old Zhan and Melon Erlao.
The data also shows that in the 835 minutes munch was present, the team netted 6 points per 100 rounds; in the 1029 minutes without, the team net loss to the opponent by 6.9 points per 100 rounds!
This also reasonably explains why Munch's playing time has increased sharply, and his Lakers career average playing time has reached 25.3 minutes per game, which is a new NBA career high.
Of course, Munch is not without technical flaws.
The defensive end is relatively thin because of its relatively thin body, and it is easy to be reduced to a points object by the opponent in the star-studded second and third positions; the offensive end also has the attribute of a nerve knife, and the score data of the number of units is quite large...
But Kan Qiujun felt that Munch had a lot of resources to solve these problems. For example, scoring with melons to learn from the experience, defensively asking Bradley for directions, wanting to be physically resistant to cao points can also consult old Zhan, and the seniors around him are the guiding lights on his way forward.
Given Munch's style of play, people generally use Lou Wei, Ray Allen, and JR as his templates. But in Munch's heart, Yang Shaoxia is the idol he wants to pursue the most.
Whenever he was asked about it, Munch would smile, and he showed his tattooed left arm and said:
"When I was 17, I heard Nick Young say he only had tattoos on his left arm and his right arm was a shooter and could only be used to score. Since then, I've decided to emulate him! ”
Perhaps the 17-year-old Munch did not expect that he would one day come to the Los Angeles Lakers like his idol and fight alongside various stars.
Now he is like a sponge, constantly absorbing the essence of the Lakers, I believe that the first contract in his life is to start with putting on the purple and gold robe!