Sorry for the lateness of today’s post, but, y’know, work. Stupid work. Anyway, one claim that I’ve made a bunch on here is that there are about 50-75 players in the league – roughly two or three per team – that are truly special players. The guys with real talent who rise above the rest. After that, everyone’s pretty much the same, and given enough playing time, the numbers will bear that out. The key for these guys is simply getting that playing time to show what they can do. We’ll be focusing on a former Terp today, so I’ll use two other former Terps as examples real quick – Juan Dixon and Steve Blake. Both guys were kind of buried in Washington, but given a chance in Portland they’ve proven they are perfectly competent players capable of putting up respectable numbers for fantasy purposes when given a certain amount of playing time. It’s all about the playing time.
In some ways, Chris Wilcox is a good data point in favor of staying in school an extra year. Maybe. He came out after his sophomore year and was able to cash in on that lottery pick rookie contract, so it’s hard to tell a guy he made a bad decision after getting a guaranteed $11 million or so. But at the same time, he was still somewhat of a project and was treated as such and has never really had the chance to prove himself on an extended basis. But no matter, he’s an “athletic” big man, so you know that once he hits free agency he’ll get some team to give him at least something close to the complete mid-level exception. But that doesn’t concern us right now. Well, it does a little since he’s going to be a restricted free agent in a few months and, as luck would have it, he looks to be the starting power forward on one of the league’s highest scoring teams for a few weeks. This could be a recipe for success.
Wilcox has had his chances as a starter before and he’s been reasonably successful, but never successful enough to turn it into anything lasting. I’ve lumped him into the same group as Stromile Swift and Melvin Ely, as big men who “just need a chance” but for whatever reason never get that chance. Because of an injury to Chris Kaman, Wilcox began last year as a starter, starting the first 19 games in the middle for the Clippers. He started off extremely strong, going for 16.2/7.7/1.7 on 55% shooting, but faltered after that, dropping off to 7.3/4.2/0.4 in his next nine starts. A couple years back, when Elton Brand got hurt after his monster 21/15 with 8 blocks opener in Japan (you think I had him on my team that year?), Wilcox was pressed into starting action and again responded quite well out of the gate. He put up 14.5/7.0/1.3 on 63% shooting, but again faltered, going for 5.8/4.2/1.4 before Brand returned. So if Wilcox is going to have some value, chances are he’ll have it sooner rather than later.
Seattle doesn’t have too much of a choice but to give him some serious PT. Nick Collison is on the shelf, Reggie Evans is in Denver, Danny Fortson is done (but obviously giving Wilcox some hair style advice). That leaves Robert Swift, Mikki Moore and Johan Petro as the only bigs on Seattle in addition to Wilcox. In other words, Wilcox has every opportunity that he needs. But keep his history in mind. Wilcox still hasn’t mastered the art of playing defense (perhaps not a problem now that he’s on Seattle) or making his coaches like him. But hey, that’s why we play fantasy basketball. Translating Wilcox’s Seattle numbers (in an admittedly small 8 game sample) out to 34-35 minutes per game, we come up with 16.1/7.3/1.2 with 0.4 steals and 0.5 blocks. Solid, unspectacular, and strangley similar to those numbers he put up when he was a starter the past two years with the Clippers (at least during his “good” runs).
But might he be capable of putting up better numbers than that? Another thing I talk about a lot is what # scoring option you are on your team. Each team has a hierarchy and the more guys you have that are at the top of the totem pole on their respective teams, the better off you’ll be. Rashard Lewis is underrated for a ton of reasons, but one reason I’ve been especially high on him the past couple of years is that there’s simply nobody else on Seattle besides Ray Allen that can be counted on as a consistent scorer. With Luke Ridnour clearly more of a distributor than a scorer, Wilcox has a real chance to be the third man.
So what’s the bottom line? Wilcox should be good to go to plug into your lineups, as long as you see that he’s starting the next time Seattle takes the court. His numbers as a starter in L.A. and his pro-rated numbers so far with Seattle show that he might actually be pretty consistent, at least for a bit. He’s not going to block many shots, but he’s also not going to miss many shots. He’s a career 53% shooter and has never been below 50% for a season. I’ve paid added – and perhaps exaggerated – attention to percentages this season, just because I think it’s so easy to overlook them compared to the counting stats. But Wilcox should shoot enough to actually make a difference there. His game-to-game consistency is where the risk lies, especially for those of you in daily lineup change formats. That’s always the risk with waiver wire pickups. Here’s an example that I recently had to endure. I pick up Ruben Patterson after he takes over as Denver’s starting SG. After he logs 36 minutes in an impressive win against Detroit, I plug him in for the next game against Houston. He ends up shooting 2-for-12 with 6 points, 5 boards and nothing else. So I take him out of the lineup for his next game. He responds with 21/5/8, 3 steals and a block on 9-of-12 shooting. I bang my head on something. This is the inherent risk with free agent pickups. So just beware.