I almost combined the Khris Middleton and CJ McCollum statistical doppelgangers because\u2026well\u2026they\u2019re pretty similar themselves. Not in terms of production, but rather in terms of career stage and status with the Wizards.<\/p>\n
Like McCollum, Middleton was a bit better than average last season\u2026when he could stay on the floor. Like McCollum, odds are he\u2019ll be around average again next season, though he\u2019s at an age where a sudden and steep decline is normal. One difference: Middleton\u2019s history of serious injuries increases his risk of a production drop-off.<\/p>\n
Like McCollum, he\u2019ll be gone when the season ends (or sooner), unless he\u2019s willing to be a veteran mentor at around the league minimum. And, like McCollum, that wouldn\u2019t be a bad thing \u2014 he\u2019s well respected and probably has much to teach Washington\u2019s youngsters.<\/p>\n
So, where does that leave the Wizards? With an aging wing who used to be pretty good, but who\u2019s now playing out the age\/injury-related decline portion of his career. Which is perfectly normal for a rebuilding team.<\/p>\n
And, the Wizards got paid a first round pick and wriggled out of multiple years of Kyle Kuzma to get him, which a) was a good bit of business by Will Dawkins, and b) is pretty normal for a rebuilding team.<\/p>\n
My version of the Statistical Doppelganger Machine uses 14 categories including box score stats and age. I don\u2019t use height or position, though players tend to get comps from the same position group.<\/p>\n
Middleton\u2019s comps are interesting. They\u2019re all good \u2014 or at least had a few good years \u2014 and they\u2019re all 30+ years old. While they had their time as starters, at this stage of their careers, they were coming off the bench. Which is to say: Middleton probably has genuine value as a reserve on a good team. Here\u2019s the group:<\/p>\n
Next up: An analytics-driven 2024 Redraft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I almost combined the Khris Middleton and CJ McCollum statistical doppelgangers because\u2026well\u2026they\u2019re pretty similar themselves. Not in terms…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85,93248],"class_list":{"0":"post-151950","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-washington-wizards-statistical-analysis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}