SHOOTING STAR

JOSH GIDDEY doesn’t look like your typical on-court killer. Shaggy of hair, gangly of limb and fresh of face, he could easily be mistaken for a high-school prefect rather than a potential hardwood hitman. Maybe that’s why opponents and pundits alike never see him coming.

Certainly, Lebron James probably didn’t know much about the scrappy kid guarding him on the wing in a match-up against the Thunder last November. It shaped as your classic ‘Welcome to the NBA’ moment. A jolting, often humiliating greeting – sometimes in the form of a posterising dunk, an ankle-breaking crossover, or a nasty blocked shot, that serves to remind a precocious rookie that while you might have been the best player at every level you’ve hitherto played, you’re now sharing the floor with some of the best