Worm Guts wrote:Zeitgeister wrote:Why are people comparing Wiggins and Edwards? Edwards started with basketball a bit late, Wiggins father was a pro NBA player, he was around it his entire life. Edwards is already grabbing nearly 2 more rebounds per game than Wiggins career average even though he's shorter than Wiggins. 1.6 spg, Wiggins hovers around 1 for his career, Edwards is also matching Wiggins BPG this season, even though he's smaller. Edwards is a flat out better athlete, better motor, Edwards has a positive BPM, Wiggins has never had a positive BPM in his career. Not saying these metrics are everything but I'm more highlighting an important difference in how these two use their athletic gifts. Edwards is still raw but you can see that the potential is very high with this kid if he manages to polish some of these skills he's developing.
If you look at Edwards PER and TS, it's very comparable to Wiggins 2nd year. It's not a very deep analysis, but it is a means for comparison. One thing about Wiggins is that neither number improved with Minnesota after his 2nd year in the league. It would be awesome if Edwards could raise both numbers and end the comparison.
I don't find it all that relevant. The box score is riddled with problems but I find that there are certain things that you can gleam from it if you look in the right places. PER is just a box score summary and as such is not that useful. For a box score aggregate, I've moved more towards BPM, which at least tries to replicate plus/minus and is an alternative at least until plus/minus stats become more available. Both still have their problems of course, but I feel like PER has especially fallen out of favor.
Edwards and Wiggins are not starting from the same place, one was around basketball all his life, the other wasn't, that's pretty relevant. Two great athletes, though Edwards is on at least another tier than Wiggins, but one of them seems ton use his athleticism a lot more, that's why I highlight stats that are often correlated with athletic tools.
While its true that both Edwards and Wiggins had/have mediocre TS% in their second season, they are not getting their points the same way. Wiggins was getting twice as many free throw attempts, Edwards is shooting a lot more threes, Wiggins shot a lot of long twos. Edwards is showing that he can be at least an average to above average three point shooter, assuming this continues of course, and what we know is that Wiggins free throw rate tanked in later seasons. I would say there's a decent chance that Edwards starts drawing more free throws in the future. At the bare minimum, if Edwards can continue to shoot reasonably well with the long ball, it's a weapon that fits on every team, we know that.
