The Evolution of Jonas Valanciunas' Hair

He hasn't been perfect of late, but Jonas Valanciunas looks like he's starting to see some light at the end of what had been a dark basketball tunnel.

The Raptors' centre went into this month in his worst slump of this young season, failing to crack double digits in scoring through four games. He'd hurt his ankle against the 76ers on Nov. 28, ran into offensive issues after that and was exposed defensively against a 3-point-shooting big in Channing Frye in another Toronto loss to the Cavs on Dec. 5.

That, along with the surprisingly efficient play of Valanciunas' backup, Lucas Nogueira, all compounded in fans and media speculating if the Lithuanian would be traded at some point for a big man that could pose Frye-like problems for Raptors' opponents.

"Ups and downs, everybody goes through those kind of games," he said after the a 20-point, 10-rebound game in a win over Minnesota. "You have to play through that stuff."

As we've watched Valanciunas through ups and downs over the last two months, we've also noticed what's been going on at the very top of his seven-foot frame.

JV's hair appears to have emerged from its own season-long slump.

In Karl-Anthony Towns, Valanciunas faced his most dangerous type of foe: a physical, quick, 3-point threat that more than once got his defender off of his feet on the perimeter and gave TNT's Kevin Harlan a throat-gasmically spectacular highlight to call.

(While we're on this topic: how great is it to have Raps games on TNT and how much did Harlan enhance DeMar DeRozan's destruction of Ricky Rubio?)

It wasn't always pretty, but Valanciunas played his part in that win and outperformed Towns, who had 17 points and 11 rebounds. He's also had four straight games now with double-digit rebounds and he's done it with his hair the most sensible it's been through training camp and 24 games.

Coincidence? Probably, but we need to run through what's been happening up there.

Valanciunas' haircut seems simple enough but it's gone through a number of incarnations lately. It was grown out longer than usual to start the season, with that length morphing into a floppy, low-hanging issue for him at points when he's on the court, rendering him with a distinctive Lego-man look.

Other times, it's stuck up in areas where you wouldn't expect it to, like in the Raptors' mid-November trip to Cleveland, or back in the Raptors' season-opener against Detroit.

People have noticed, to mixed reviews.

JV I love you but we gotta have a conversation about your hair and you're not gonna like it — Vanessa (@g0nessa)December 4, 2016

JV needs to decide whether he's going to shave his hair or grow it. — julz (@himynameisjulz)December 4, 2016

JV's beard is looking absolutely fantastic already. The hair on his head is brutal, but that beard is beautiful. — Ellay Heys (@EllayHeys)November 24, 2016

JV and the longer hair? It's dope, right? — Arianne Young (@KissBettyInc)November 13, 2016

JV needs some wax in his hair. — Marvin Shane (@bigdoubleoh)October 27, 2016

Part of the reason for this, someone in close proximity to JV told me, is that the big man doesn't like to use product in his hair during a game. Sweat and gel or paste or wax, whatever taming substance that you might want to use, are not a good mix.

But lately, things have looked clean and tight once again. Fresh off last Thursday's win, Valanciunas didn't want to get into what he and his barber have concocted when asked about his hair.

"Changing haircut?" Valanciunas responded. "You're from a fashion magazine? We're not talking fashion here, man. (This is the) wrong place to talk fashion, right?"

A few stalls over from Valanciunas, DeMarre Carroll would disagree. The Raptors' prized perimeter defender is as fashion conscious as Russell Westbrook, but hasn't gotten the widespread attention for his endless supply of high-end clothes.

"I don't know if his wife got on him or what, but now he's cutting his hair in his son's style," Carroll said of the cleaner, shorter look that Valanciunas has had recently. "He used to (cut his hair) bald, but I think his son was getting a lot of love, so he said, 'Hey, let me try that.'"

Valanciunas entered the NBA back in 2012 with a shaved head, a look we've come to associate with him.

But a transformation began taking shape during the Rio Olympicsthis summer. Let's take a look at how his hair has evolved since last season's playoffs.

For some more input on this important matter, I stopped in at a barbershop in my neighbourhood in Toronto. The owner wanted his place to stay nameless, since they don't cut JV's hair. One guy there said that yeah, he'd noticed some hair irregularities at the start of the season. Another threw out the same caveat I'd heard at the arena before JV had 11 points and 13 boards in Monday's win against the Bucks: You can't judge the haircut solely by how it looks on the court. Sweat will mess things up and what really matters, he said, was how it looks off the court.

That's true, but fair or not, millions of eyes are on these players when they're on the court and considerably less off of it. In the barbershop, the Raptors' win over the T-Wolves played on a big screen, while another barber cut a customer's hair. I could be overanalyzing this, but as I spoke with the guys at the barbershop I felt like they were sizing up my haircut as I dug into the ins and outs of JV's.

Which leads me to some necessary full disclosure: Throughout this entire piece, I've been launching metaphorical bricks while galavanting through a glass house. The back of my head, my barber tells me, grows hair in three different directions. Days where everything is going in the direction that it should and where product actually does its job are as rare for me as a Valanciunas 3-pointer.

Some of us are plagued by rogue strands of hair that have no regard for human life; others are tortured by rangy seven-footers. JV has the rare ability to occasionally conquer both.