{"id":155623,"date":"2025-07-08T11:03:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T11:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/155623\/"},"modified":"2025-07-08T11:03:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T11:03:09","slug":"wizards-make-excellent-trade-for-cam-whitmore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/155623\/","title":{"rendered":"Wizards make excellent trade for Cam Whitmore"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ll start with this: I love the Wizards trade for Cam Whitmore. He might or might not become a good player, but he\u2019s young (entering his age 21 season), athletic, and was cheap to acquire (Washington paid two second round picks). As Matt Modderno said on his podcast<\/a>, this is exactly the type of move a rebuilding team should make.<\/p>\n

My stat-based draft prospect tool, Ye Olde Draft Analyzer (YODA for short), liked Whitmore a lot. He ranked eighth in his draft class, and his score in YODA would have ranked in the 10-12 range in this year\u2019s group.<\/p>\n

For reasons that aren\u2019t entirely clear, he plummeted on draft night, falling all the way to the 20th pick where he was selected by the Houston Rockets<\/a>. He immediately ran into the kinds of obstacles that often afflict promising youngsters selected later in the first round \u2014 a loaded roster, and a team that wanted to win and didn\u2019t have a lot of minutes to devote to the development of a 19- or 20-year-old.<\/p>\n

In the 1,600+ minutes he\u2019s gotten as a pro, he\u2019s been kinda-sorta okay. His overall performance was solid as a rookie (PPA: 73) and slipped a bit (PPA: 67) in year two. That\u2019s not as worrisome as it may seem. Most of his numbers were \u201cabout the same\u201d in both seasons. His rebounding went up, his per minute assists nearly doubled, and his turnovers crept up a bit.<\/p>\n

That 67 PPA is not a concern \u2014 prospects who enter the NBA at 19 (like Whitmore did) often don\u2019t make significant jumps in year two. Their bigger jumps come in years three and four. My career forecaster thinks he has a solid decade of above average production in his future, including multiple years in the sub-All-Star range (meaning: borderline\/arguable case for being an All-Star).<\/p>\n

Is that possibility worth a couple second round picks? You bet.<\/p>\n

Last thing: I ran Whitmore\u2019s 2024-25 season through my Statistical Doppelganger Machine, which weighs several stat categories and produces a list of player seasons \u201cmost similar\u201d to the reference player. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the list:<\/p>\n

Naz Reid, 2019-20, MIN \u2014 This was Reid\u2019s rookie year. Since then, he\u2019s established himself as a valuable reserve with the Minnesota Timberwolves<\/a>. The Wizards would be happy if Whitmore became a high 80s PPA (Reid\u2019s peak so far is 88) reserve.<\/p>\n

Ryan Anderson, ORL, 2009-10 \u2014 I feel like fans might feel disappointed by this comp, but I urge you to recall how good Anderson was becoming before he injured his back and suffered a devastating personal tragedy. In his era, he was the platonic ideal of the stretch-four. The Wizards would be ecstatic if Whitmore could become as productive as the pre-injury\/tragedy Anderson was.<\/p>\n

Trey Lyles, 2018-19, DEN \u2014 This was Lyles\u2019 age 23 season, which was actually one of his worst. The following year he went to San Antonio and had what would be the best year of his career. Five years later, he\u2019s still a useful reserve forward who\u2019s reasonably competent from three-point range, and an above average rebounder.<\/p>\n

Rodney White, 2003-04, DEN \u2014 Year three of White\u2019s non-stellar career. He peaked with a 70 PPA the following season. While the number are similar, Whitmore is already ahead of where White was as a player.<\/p>\n

Jordan Hamilton, 2012-13, DEN \u2014 This was year two of Hamilton\u2019s career, which started with promising signals and then fizzled. Three subpar seasons after this one, Hamilton was out of the league.<\/p>\n

After this, the doppelganger machine provides another season from Naz Reid, followed by names like Moritz Wagner (in Orlando), Kevin Knox (yikes), and Charlie Villanueva (eh). A little further down the list is Jonathan Kuminga\u2019s rookie year, and Jaren Jackson Jr.\u2019s 11-game third year.<\/p>\n

What does this tell us about the likelihood that Whitmore reaches his potential with the Wizards? Not much \u2014 the comps are mainly for entertainment value. The better information is from his actual performance the past couple years in Houston, which while not great, was also not bad for someone his age.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a chance he could become a very good player for Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ll start with this: I love the Wizards trade for Cam Whitmore. He might or might not become…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3780],"tags":[7,1069,2179,29509,95,1070,28,656,6,409,682,468,3920,3892,6174,683],"class_list":{"0":"post-155623","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-washington-wizards","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bullets","10":"tag-cam","11":"tag-excellent","12":"tag-for","13":"tag-forever","14":"tag-front-page","15":"tag-make","16":"tag-nba","17":"tag-trade","18":"tag-washington","19":"tag-washington-wizards","20":"tag-washington-wizards-statistical-analysis","21":"tag-washingtonwizards","22":"tag-whitmore","23":"tag-wizards"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114817283358348734","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}