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D'AWWW ALERT! Despite fighting for a starting job, point guards Greivis Vasquez and Isaiah Thomas are totally BFFs. From Jason Jones at the Bee:
"I'm teammates with Isaiah, so if anybody in this league is going to say something about Isaiah, I'm going to step up for him because I'm his teammate," Vasquez said. "He's part of the family."
From Jon Santiago at Cowbell Kingdom:
[Michael] Malone on the point guard battle between Isaiah Thomas and Greivis Vasquez: "What I loved today was you got two highly competitive players fighting for a starting job on this team that pushed each other, but pushed each other the right way. They weren't trying to hurt each other. They weren't trying to do anything dirty, but they pushed each other the right way. They helped each other off the floor. They were giving each other high fives afterwards, knowing that this is a competition and no matter what happens at the end of the day that we have two very talented point guards that are gonna hopefully lead us to wins this year."
This is good news: I got the sense last season that Isaiah and Aaron Brooks weren't terribly friendly, and that didn't help when Keith Smart made some of his amazing rotation decisions. That said, it's an entirely different atmosphere and environment this year -- what Malone has to work with and what Smart did aren't comparable, really.
And one: this was the Bee's headline on their Vasquez-Isaiah story ...
Kings' Mutt and Jeff: Vasquez (tall) and Thomas (short) offer diverse styles at point guard
The story does not explain the Mutt and Jeff reference, because hell no would Jason Jones reference a goofy comic strip that hasn't run in his lifetime. I looked it up, and Mutt and Jeff -- these guys ...
... --- were "two mismatched tinhorns." Wikipedia calls Mutt a dimwitted compulsive gambler in as many words, and Jeff is an inmate at an asylum who loves horseracing. Oh, and Mutt almost always wears a top hat. Character confusion in Kingsland, ahhh!
If we're going to refer to Greivis and Isaiah as unflattering old comic strip characters, can we just go with Frank and Ernest? At least most people under the age of 70 have heard of Frank and Ernest. (Oh man, you younger people have heard of Frank and Ernest, right?)