This is the story of that play.

The Nate Situation

On February 8, 2017, the Delaware 87ers signed Nate Robinson from the pool of the available players.

“Robinson might be best known in Philadelphia as the man who robbed former Sixer Andre Iguodala in the 2006 Slam Dunk Contest.” – not every fan seemed thrilled by this signing

At almost 33, Robinson was a declining veteran that played only two NBA games with the New Orleans Pelicans the season before and was trying to fight to stay relevant and make his way back into the league after a brief experience with Hapoel Tel Aviv.

However, he still was a three times Slam Dunk Contest winner that enchanted the crowds and a 5-foot-9 inches player that played over 600 NBA games. This was something you didn’t see every day at the D-League level.

He debuted with the Sevens on 14th February against the Maine Red Claws, playing 18 minutes in a 20-point win.

After a 3-0 record since Robinson’s signing, on the 25th February 2017 the Delaware 87ers faced the Raptors 905 at the Bob Carpenter Center, their home arena from 2013 to 2018.

In this game, Robinson checks in for Aaron Harrison with 4:05 left in the first quarter.

At the 8:04 minutes mark in the second quarter, Nate gets the ball on the right wing from Shawn Long who immediately sets a screen for him. At this point, Walter Tavares, the giant Raptors 905’s defensive center, jumps off the screen and traps Robinson with EJ Singler’s help, clearly thinking their length would be overwhelming for the 5’9 guard.

Robinson, trapped in a corner unable to do whatever, with a fearless move, goes towards the only open gap between him and the paint. And that gap happens to be the opening between Tavares’ long legs.

Taking advantage of the high center of gravity of the Cape Verdean big man, Robinson dribbles through his legs.

The possession ends with Nate attempting a shot at the rim and a foul by CJ Leslie who starts shouting furiously to the referees.

But everyone is still in awe of what happened right before and the reactions in the stands are disparate: those who clap, those who laugh, others in shock.

This is the “Natemeg” (as a Reddit user named it): an unprecedented basketball move that required unusual physical features, courage and the creativity to even just imagine it. A true metaphor of Robinson’s career.

“They thought I didn’t take the game seriously because I was playing around and having a good time but I think that was my gift as in keeping my inner child and staying young, man, that was my gift to the world.”

Nate Robinson

Son of a Gun

There’s bewilderment and anger on the Raptors’ players’ faces. What just happened can’t be properly processed. 

What just happened falls in an undefined regulatory zone.

That move is potentially dangerous and probably shouldn’t be regular but it doesn’t break any rule.

Walter Tavares, “sacrificed” on the altar of Robinson’s show, complains without much conviction.

But at the end of the day that’s just an unfortunate lowlight in the middle of a dominant defensive season for Tavares. He averaged 2.7 blocks and 0.8 steals in just 23.6 minutes per game during that season with the Raptors 905.

Standing at 7’3 with a 7’9 wingspan, he towered above every opponent but he also showed a solid understanding and processing of the game combined with better ground coverage than you would expectet from your gigantic big man. A terrific mix that made him the D-League Defensive Player of the Year that season.

However it wasn’t enough to convince another NBA team to bet on him and on 10th November 2017, Tavares signed with Real Madrid for the rest of the 2017-18 season. As soon as he came back to Europe, he was one of the best defensive players around. He was the block leader and won Defensive Player of the year of the Spanish League already in 2017-18, an award that he has now won for 6 straight seasons.

He didn’t break out abruptly, becoming as impactful as he is now. He was 24 at the time and added pieces to his game through the years but the foundation for a high-level defensive presence was already there in the then D-League.

But there’s another consideration about his developmental curve and his lack of NBA success.

He found himself in the league probably in the period of the greatest aversion for big men. The Warriors meteorite hit the league a couple of years before and almost everyone was convinced the consequent small ball cloud would’ve provoked the extinction of the big man (while we now know they “found a way”). This certainly wasn’t the best environment for a 7’3 giant to thrive and for a team to invest efforts on such a player on the margins.

I’m convinced Tavares could’ve been a decent backup center in the NBA for a while in his prime, especially on a team with a defense based on conservative schemes. In addition to his obvious defensive skills, he has also been a 71% free throw shooter through his career (on over 1700 attempts across Europe, NBA and G League) while flirting with a 0.50 free throw rate and this skill would have certainly helped him stay on the floor for longer periods.

But at the end of the day, after going back to Europe and being that impactful from the start, Tavares likely had no reason to leave Madrid and his well-paid, starring role in exchange for a similarly paid, more uncertain NBA role.

The Gold Gadget

 “He gave the people what they wanted to see”

After the initial disbelief, that was the first thought Varun Raghupathi, the play-by-play commentator, had while calling that game in Newark.

Most of the 2,853 persons in attendance probably were there just to see “the Gadget”, who was already one of the most well-known and popular players that would ever play for the Delaware 87ers. 

“He seemed to know that half the crowd was there just to see him, so he was definitely trying to put on a show and entertain the people who came out for him”

In the middle of a bad game, ending at one for six from the field, 2 turnovers, 3 fouls and a -18 plus/minus, Robinson found a way to delight them with an unprecedented play.

Nate Robinson’s mix of superhuman athleticism, passion for Allen Iverson and his childish approach to the game made him a true showman of the parquet. KryptoNate jumping over Dwight “Superman” Howard, his legendary blocks on Yao Ming and Shaquille O’Neal, his dunk over Spud Webb. He often felt part of his well-written script; he was gifted with a cinematic perfection that is hard to explain.

But the story of the “Natemeg” is also telling about the growth of the NBA development league in the last years. The landscape has drastically changed since then. The 2016-17 season was the last season before the Gatorade sponsorship that lit the fuse of a new era.

In the last 6 season, the G League completed its transformation from a seeming sentencing for players on the margins to a powerful opportunity not only for players but also for staffs, executives and obviously for NBA teams.

Since the advent of the Gatorade sponsorship, the NBA implemented numerous tools to give teams a better control on “developmental” players and encourage the franchises to invest more into their affiliates. This made the League a true pool of talent with stronger bounds with the NBA and created a virtuous circle in which almost everyone involved, from the executives to the coaches and the players, is pushed to be better to reach the next level.

Some teams understood the power of a well-organized G League affiliate earlier, some later but the general trend has been undeniable. Indeed every NBA team will at last have a G League affiliate for the 2024-25 season (compared to the 22 teams of the 2016-17 season).

It’s also interesting to analyze the players who stepped on the court at the Bob Carpenter Center that day. The Raptors 905’s starting five was composed of John Jordan, Negus Webster-Chan, Antwaine Wiggins, Bruno Caboclo and Yanick Moreira with CJ Leslie, Brady Heslip, EJ Singler, Walter Tavares and Christian Watford completing the rotation. The Delaware 87ers lined up Russ Smith, Brandon Triche, Aaron Harrison, James Webb III and Shawn Long with Devondrick Walker, Danuel House, Nate Robinson, Carlos Lopez-Sosa and Roscoe Smith off the bench. Overall the only players that carved out a real NBA role were Danuel House, Nate Robinson (well past his prime at the time) and maybe Caboclo if you want to count him.

The Raptors 905 won the league that year and, in hindsight, they lined up Pascal Siakam and Fred Vanvleet for a certain number of games, but those two were just a 27th pick and an undrafted guard at the time. The 905 have probably been one of the first teams to believe in the D-League as a valid development path.

The increse of talent through the years has been striking. Nowadays basically every G League game is full of two-way players, valid rookies, NBA veterans and lately we’ve even seen a greater tendency to assign lottery picks to the G League. Six lottery picks from the 2023 Draft spent time playing there during this season. Amen Thompson, Taylor Hendricks, Jarace Walker, Jett Howard, Gradey Dick, Jordan Hawkins: they collectively played over 75 G League games so far.

Primary criticisms of the G League include how playstyle is too different from an actual NBA game and can lead to developmental short circuits, points I partly agree with it. But I also think it depends on the team taken into consideration. More teams are getting better at creating functional structures to support the prospects’ development. A recent example that comes to mind is how the Memphis Hustle rebuilt GG Jackson’s habits in the past months (and I think Jason Preston’s ability to set his teammates up really helped here).

However, in the face of exponential growth, there are still some weak points that affect the level of the product.

The turnover within the rosters of players that aren’t two-ways or NBA assignees certainly gives a dynamic shape to the league but also generates a series of issues. It is probably harder to build advanced offensive and defensive structures and this affects in first place the level of the game and secondly the development of the NBA players assigned to the affiliate teams.

The broadcasting coverage is another long-standing issue. The fragmentation of the television rights probably doesn’t help to create consistent interest around a team or certain storylines. The games freely televised by the G League on their YouTube channel are very difficult to find if you don’t know exactly where to look and the replays are available for a very short time. These things make the league difficult to follow for the average viewer and annoying to study for the analysts (who would be helped also by a better stats management on the official site).

Having the television rights concentrated in fewer hands, bringing back games streamed on a well-known platform like Twitch (the “Natemeg” game was streamed on Facebook for example) and making the replays available for longer times are solutions that would make the product much more consumable.

Moving on to a less technical aspect, the development of the league is clear even simply looking at the arena in which the game was played. At the time the then Delaware 87ers were playing in a college arena that didn’t enhance their brand. Now the Delaware Blue Coats play in the Chase Fieldhouse, a gem with a small capacity but characterized by large glass walls that make it one of the most fascinating arenas of the league in my opinion.

Epilogue

The “Natemeg” encapsulates a universe of different topics behind a curtain of spectacularity. It weaves together an iconic player on the wane but still able to amaze, the growing pains of a dominant international defensive player and the transformation of everything related to the NBA development league.

More elevated and compelling matters generally catch our attention but sometimes even just revisiting a single play can put things in a different light, telling us a long and interesting story.

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