#ComebackSZN: NBA Players Who Will Prove Haters Wrong Next Season | Bleacher Report

The term “hater” gets tossed around a lot, but never by anyone who’s actually winning an argument.

More than anything, it’s become a lazy defense against rational criticism.

You don’t think Lance Stephenson and Rajon Rondo were terrific signings for the Lakers?! You’re a hater!

You see how it works. It lets the emotional combatant get in an empty two cents without legitimately engaging in a discussion. It’s an embarrassing crutch.

Here, though, we’re using it as a synonym for doubters.

Last year, a handful of NBA players found themselves down and out whether because of an injury, a conspicuous playoff failure or some mysterious hangup that wrecked their season.

Some of these guys performed well overall, but they still need to change the narrative. They must silence their haters. And they will.

Bill Baptist/Getty Images

Karl-Anthony Towns finished his first playoff series with three straight double-doubles, but the lasting impression from his 2018 postseason was head coach Tom Thibodeau calling him out after an eight-point Game 1 effort.

“He’s got to be more active,” Thibs told reporters, putting the onus for the poor production on his young cornerstone. Shaquille O’Neal criticized Towns’ passiveness on Inside the NBA, and Scottie Pippen echoed the sentiment on ESPN’s The Jump.

Towns wasn’t the only blameworthy party. Thibodeau’s offense seemed oddly unprepared for the Houston Rockets’ switchy scheme, and Minnesota’s guards didn’t look for Towns on the block. More broadly, Towns’ failings also could be chalked up to inexperience. That he finished the series strong says more about him than the way he started it.

Still, perception is reality, and Towns is perceived as a postseason disappointment. Add to that Jimmy Butler’s reported dissatisfaction with his teammate and a lingering offense-only reputation, and Towns has loads to prove.

A generational offensive talent, the Wolves’ star center can use last spring’s rough patch as motivational fuel. If that manifests in more offensive aggression, well, he’s already the best scoring big man in the NBA, so defenses better be on alert. If Towns develops on D to the point where he’s an average contributor, he immediately becomes one of the dozen best players in the league.

Motivated, entering his fourth year and already historically productive, Towns is going to shut his critics up in 2018-19.

Brian Babineau/Getty Images

It doesn’t get much worse than a grotesque, season-ending injury just minutes into the opener, but that’s exactly how Gordon Hayward’s first year with the Boston Celtics began…and ended.

While the Boston Celtics’ marquee 2017 free-agent splash may not have haters in the conventional sense, he enters 2018-19 with questions to answer and doubters to silence. Hayward has much to prove—not just to outside observers, but also to his own team.

That’s because Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown used his absence last season to fast-track their growth trajectories. Tatum became Boston’s go-to scoring option in the playoffs (thanks to Kyrie Irving‘s injury), and Brown has two-way star upside that’s slightly different than Tatum’s potential alpha profile, but perhaps no less valuable.

Hayward is the high-priced vet, and encouraging clips of his rehab work likely suggest he isn’t in danger of losing his first-unit role. But when he returns to the court for game action as a starter, he’ll have to produce.

Boston is a legitimate contender, so there shouldn’t be any room for coddling with so much at stake. Hayward will have to earn his minutes, which is no small task with both Tatum and Brown likely to improve in their second and third seasons, respectively.

It’s easy to forget now, but Hayward was in select company before his injury. He was one of only nine players to average at least 19 points, five rebounds and 3.5 assists per game from 2014-15 to 2016-17, his last three healthy years. In that group, populated exclusively by MVPs and multitime All-Stars, Hayward’s 37 percent conversion rate from deep trailed only Kevin Durant and Paul George during the three-year span.

That guy, the one with elite statistical peers before his injury, is going to be back in 2018-19.

Mitchell Leff/Getty Images

We may never know how to weigh the combination of factors that scuttled Markelle Fultz’s rookie season. How serious was his shoulder injury? What percentage of his shooting yips were due to a physical issue? What percentage was mental?

That mystery may linger forever. But Fultz has an opportunity to make 2017-18 a footnote in his career, not the defining chapter.

Even when he refused to look at the basket from outside of 10 feet, Fultz still flashed many of the skills that justified his selection at No. 1 overall. Long, explosive, slithery and in possession of unteachable start-and-stop jitters with the ball in his hands, Fultz profiles as a scoring guard who can get to any spot he wants. In transition, he’s faster than you think, and his innate ability to knock defenders off balance will serve him well when attacking the rim.

Consider this a bet that all of Fultz’s skill and untapped production is ready to burst out as he reboots his career as a sophomore. 

Tatum’s arrival as a future star made the deal that landed Fultz on the Sixers look like a fleecing, and it’ll be hard ever to acknowledge Boston as anything but the clear winner in that deal. But it’s entirely too early to give up on Fultz. Trainer Drew Hanlen, who’s worked to retool Fultz’s shot (which looks better) sure hasn’t.

When asked what a fully ready Fultz would look like in 2018-19, he told Evan Daniels of FS1: “Star. I literally think that if he’s back to 100 percent, I think he’s immediately an All-Star. I know that’s a bold statement, but I work with a lot of other All-Stars, so I think I have the right to say that.”

Fultz is going to make believers out of everyone. 

Ronald Cortes/Getty Images

Nine games. That’s all we got from Kawhi Leonard, the man who finished third in MVP voting during his last healthy season, in 2017-18.

Take that tiny sample, caused by some combination of a quad injury and poisonous dissatisfaction with the San Antonio Spurs, and you have a broad spectrum of possible outcomes for Leonard’s first season with the Toronto Raptors.

Maybe he’ll never be the same. Maybe his handling of the 2017-18 season indicates he’s prohibitively difficult to please. Either way, there’s no shortage of skeptical side-eyes being cast his way.

The most optimistic outlook, in which we assume Leonard will be fully healthy and that his missed time owed more to professional discontent than injury, is fraught. Because adopting that mindset means putting faith in a guy who straight-up quit on his team, fracturing the monolith of San Antonio’s high-functioning culture in one fell swoop. It’d mean Leonard wasn’t hurt…just vindictive.

If Leonard is past all of that, is healthy and if this was only about the quad all along, Toronto has an MVP ready to vault it to the top of the East and put a scare into anyone on the other side of an NBA Finals matchup.

Leonard is 27 years old, an established superstar and apparently healthy enough to work out with title-winners and superstars this summer. He’s on a fantastic team with a clear view of the Finals ahead of him.

The resurgence is coming. Anyone clinging to doubts about Leonard’s place in the league’s hierarchy is about to get some clarity when he reassumes his spot in the top tier.

Jayne Kamin-Oncea/Getty Images

If you’re lazy and don’t think about why you feel the way you do, it’s easy to hate on Lonzo Ball.

But if you take a step back and note he didn’t generate any of the outsized hype that accompanied him, that he couldn’t control the blustery hot air spewing from his father, you realize Ball is just a great young basketball player.

Unfortunately, the lazy approach always has more market share in the opinion economy.

Believe it or not, Ball was actually productive as a rookie, finishing second only to Ben Simmons among rookies in box plus-minus. That he managed to be a positive force (the Lakers were 1.4 points per 100 possessions better when he played) despite a ghastly 44.4 true shooting percentage says everything about Ball’s intangibles and on-the-margins contributions.

His ball movement was contagious, and his rebounding was excellent for a guard. Defensively, Ball’s instincts were sound. His length, anticipation and savvy resulted in a plus-2.31 defensive real plus-minus that ranked third among point guards last year.

The busted form on his jumper and an inability to finish around the rim limited Ball’s offensive impact as a rookie, and those shortcomings, combined with all the extracurricular nonsense (virtually none of which Ball created), made him an easy target for doubt.

Heading into his second year, Ball figures to thrive alongside LeBron James, another intuitive playmaker who processes the game with similar foresight. Casual fans and haters may never appreciate Ball’s defense and harder-to-spot skills, but James will. And that’ll be empowering.

Expect Ball to further distance himself from the things he can’t control while making improvements to his offensive weak spots. The result will be a sterling second year that refocuses the spotlight where it belongs: on Ball the player.

All statistics via Basketball Reference, NBA.com or ESPN.com, unless otherwise noted.