Madison Booker’s Game Punishes The Tryhard Defender

Madison Booker is a perfectly polite, charismatic young woman, but there is no other player in her sport for whom the word "rude" comes to mind as often. In basketball, rudeness is a two-pronged trait: It's being good enough to make a hard game look easy, but more than that, it’s being good enough to make your opponent’s hard work seem like a waste. It's strutting into a department store, knocking over a stack of neatly folded sweaters, and heading home. What you feel when you watch a defender stay in front of Booker, only for her to rise up and nail a midrange jumper over their head, is overwhelming pity. If Texas was likely to be a one-seed in the NCAA tournament anyway, the SEC Tournament championship Booker led them to this past weekend should ensure that the Longhorns end up with the third overall seed, in the Fort Worth regional not far from home. In three tournament games—a quarterfinal against Alabama, a semifinal against Ole Miss, and a final against South Carolina on Sunday—the junior Booker averaged 20 points and 8.3 rebounds, shooting 61.4 percent from the field and earning tournament MVP honors in her very rude way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lCZwOJmvcY