Last season, he put up an extremely productive season, accumulating ~13 WAR over 80 games. He was definitely in the discussion of being one of the top 10 players in the NBA, showing to be the whole package offensively; scoring efficiently, creating scoring opportunities for teammates, and preventing turnovers. In the 2019-20 season, he has been playing at an MVP level, projecting for a ~21 WAR season over an 82-game season. He has been able to step up his scoring efficiency to an insane .654 TS% (96th percentile) with a high amount of 3-pointers (76th percentile). One reason for his rise in scoring efficiency has been his ability to score more efficiently at the rim (.714% FG) compared to last season (.564% FG). He has played at an high level, but it is hard to expect him to continue at a .600 TS% pace because he has never cracked .600 TS% in his career, and it’s overall just plain hard to maintain such a high scoring efficiency we’ve seen from few point guards other than Stephen Curry.
For the 3 seasons that Brogdon was with the Milwaukee Bucks, he played a clear supporting role with the team rightfully playing through Giannis Anteokounmpo. He proved to be a good player with a couple of seasons of 4+ WAR, but never showed to be an elite, top 25 player. As part of a sign-and-trade deal to Indiana, he has seen his usage increase by ~7%, but has shown the same consistency as a scorer (.580 TS%) and showing creation ability that we have not seen before (38.9%). Though he is shooting a lot more mid-range shots (16 Ft-3Pt) than last season, he has seen his shooting efficiency on those shots increase from .360 FG% to .487 FG%, where he is shooting a lot of pick-roll actions off of Domantas Sabonis. Overall, he projects to have ~11 WAR over an 82-game schedule, which would put him in the elite category. He’ll be an interesting guy to monitor if he can maintain this pace for an extended amount of time.
Many people have been positive on his game so early into the season. However, the Knicks may be so bad that he has looked a lot better in people’s eyes than the numbers have shown. In college, he scored at a high rate (35.0 PTS per 100 Poss), but did not score the ball efficiently (.532 TS%). At the pro level, he has been basically the same; scoring at a high rate (22.1 PTS per 100 Poss), but at a dismal efficiency (.462 TS%). His efficiency struggles stem from his inability to convert the mid-range shots like the floater (3-10 Ft: .256, 10-16 Ft: .222) and his free-throws (44.8%). Working primarily as a Shooting-Guard, he has shown the ability to generate scoring opportunities for his teammates (67th percentile) and offensive rebounds (86th percentile). With not being a true-positive defender, his future value will depend on scoring efficiency being a lot better than it has been.
We have been told by many draft experts that Cam Reddish was the most talented player in the 2019 NBA Draft. However, in college, he suffered from poor scoring efficiency (.499 TS%). In addition, he turned over the ball at a high rate (4.9 TOs per 100 Poss), yet created so few scoring opportunities (3.6 Ast per 100 Poss), Although the season is still young, Reddish has scored at a historically low efficiency (.335 TS%). For someone that has been advertised as an outside threat, he has only shot 19.4% from the 3-Point line. With Trae Young being out for a couple of games, we’ve somehow seen him play as a Point-Guard in a couple games, which is pretty insane to me because he has shown the same struggles with creating scoring opportunities for teammates (10.3%) and controlling his turnovers (18.8%). Again, it’s so early in the season, but he is looking more like a bust than a star.