Kendrick Nunn sat on the bench, his eyes vacant.
The 24-year-old guard hailed as the strongest undrafted player since Link had put up truly dismal numbers today.
Now that the game had reached the fourth quarter, Nunn had made just 3 of 13 shots and scored only 10 points.
At first glance, 10 points was pretty good for an undrafted player.
But scoring only 10 points on 13 attempts was another matter entirely.
As the saying went, if my grandma got 13 shot attempts, she could score 10 points too.
This was perhaps the game in which Nunn had looked most like an undrafted player in his entire career.
He had completely lost his rhythm almost from the first quarter onward.
And it was all because of that Grizzlies number zero.
Link's dominant performance and vicious trash talk had utterly shattered Nunn's confidence, leaving him extremely hesitant on the court.
Hesitation was fatal on a basketball court.
In an NBA league where opportunities were measured in seconds, every moment of hesitation was equivalent to wasting an opportunity.
Nunn had wasted plenty of chances today. He hesitated when he should have passed, and by the time he decided to make the pass, the passing lane had already been sealed off.
He did not shoot when the opportunity came, and after hesitating, he ended up forcing shots through defense instead.
Nunn did not look at all like a player who had spent four years grinding through college basketball. Generally speaking, even if older rookies lacked talent or ability, they were always very composed on the court.
But today, Nunn had run around like a headless fly, contributing absolutely nothing but negatives.
That was precisely why he was sitting on the bench now. Because Nunn's performance today had been too awful to watch,