For those who aren’t familiar, british soccer commentator Andy Gray said this of Messi back in 2010/11, questioning whether Messi could dominate in tough conditions against a physical premier league club. It’s now a popular joke within the soccer and internet community.
For the NBA, is it “Can he do it after a night out in Miami?” “Can he do it on the second night of a back to back in Denver?” “Can he do it after the Lakers sent missed foul call video evidence to the league?” Something else?
To actually answer your question there’s two ways of going about it:
Part of the Stoke quote is because they were a physical team more than a footballing team at times. I’m not sure you really have that in the nba but the bad boy pistons and the 2000’s title winning pistons side were quite physical teams. So maybe it’s “can he do it in the second night of a back to back in the palace?”
You focus on the rainy night aspect of Stoke being grim and cold. Now the obvious answer would be Toronto as it’s the most north, the coldest and no one wants to move there it seems. But I’d pitch instead Denver because there’s always this altitude talk of how difficult it is to play away there when you don’t have time to climatise. So maybe “can he do it at 5000ft in Denver?”
That’s my best attempt
Toronto isn’t the most north. Minnesota is more north, as is Portland.
You can also add the Bad Boys Pistons of the late 80s and early 90s to your first point.