Originally Posted by
greybeard
It means that this guy is performing at the vortex of the team, doing what he normally does, see my gazillion posts over the years and critiques in the multiple gazillions, and ask your how this guy is still growing each game in performance and importance, steps up at crucial moments, sets the tone and style, especially in the face of unwanted outcomes, shoots a shot from 3 that had to have been taught him by a man from Mars that goes in 50 plus percent of the time, and has earned his place at the helm of this extremely talented team that everyone wrote off only how can you write off a team when a captain comes off the bench hitting 3 3 threes in a row with a style that none of us has seen. Tyler chose this style because he developed it and it works, not because it looks good. It insults other teams, he steps in, glides, does not look to elevate or even bring the ball up to his forehead or higher. He shoots it from the hip, there is nothing a defender can do to disrupt the shot or his vision, if there is he does not shoot it, and he is killing people with it. Okay, come prepared for Parker and Hood and Rasheed and Dawkins, deal with ugly and deadly. Deal with me. Get through me. Or not. And, if not, trouble. Big, big trouble. Just one story in a much, much bigger one.
This guy who has the heart of a lion, the wiles of his coach, the calm of a warrior, commands the respect of his teammates, this guy who has delivered in victory and defeat with the same I-see-it-I-do-it all out because I trust me and my boyz on every play, gets ignorned by the world and torn apart, relatively speaking, by some fans who would not see exceptionalism if it hit them in their heads which it has.
Now, on a division III program that would be one thing. But, Thornton has been doing this for 4 years now on the biggest stage imaginable, and, aside from an occasional platitude which is really another way of saying "we don't know what he is doing out there so we'll throw him a bone because, hey, we do not know enough to argue the point with K. This year he has been emerging ever stronger right in the vortex of a team that more and more grows in a way that shows great promise; at least it deserves great respect. And, still, There is Parker, and Hood, and Amile, and Rasheed, and Plumlee, and Cook, and Dawkins but it is a no talent that people are still trying to pick apart who has been quietly putting up staggering numbers while giving this team a personality, and what a personality it is.
So, what are Thornton's defining qualities. "The elements [a]re so mixed in him that nature might stand up and say to all the world, 'this [I]s a man.'" Syracuse has a spectacular talent, Ennis. Duke has Thornton. Defines the two programs exactly doesn't it.
The irony is that not a head has picked up on it. In this thread, many have. To them I say, Duke.