Everyone is great now, wear shades

The statistics say NBA box score outbursts happen more than they used to, the three-point line blew everything up, today’s children roll out of bed and roll in 50.

The track at Flamingo Park in South Beach is always two or three degrees hotter than the other tracks in Miami. And in the heat of Friday afternoons in the summer it’s usually deserted -- an uncomfortable place to be.

But for eight weeks this summer, there was Donovan Mitchell. Running endless sprints. Mitchell, his trainer David Alexander and a jug of water. Six sprints of 50 meters. Then five of 100 meters. Three at 200 meters. And then, at the end, two lung-busting 400s, the most grueling of them all on a surface that was usually around 100 degrees.

But sure, let’s blame the rules or lax defense or the three-point line. Can’t be the performers.

We don’t blink at Mitchell’s pull-up jumpers anymore. Donovan knows his Miami abs could kerf the reds and browns right out of a mahogany beam, a 25-foot shot doesn’t look too treacherous once you’ve dashed 2200 yards. For two months. In Miami. In summer.

I can tell you the point guards of my youth did not prepare this way, nor did the point guards who preceded them. I’m not denying Rod Strickland and Gary Payton didn’t carry around a jug at one point, or that their jugs weren’t similarly satisfying and as in danger of being emptied in Miami.