A month ago, I wrote about the myth of Corey Kispert’s constant improvement. The TLDR: he’s not bad, and there’s room to get better just by living up to the theory behind drafting him. But he’s also some distance from good, and the stories being told about his improvement are a bit exaggerated.
Anyway, today let’s look at results from running his production last season through the Statistical Doppelganger Machine.
For those new to annual summer tradition of…well…running players through the Statistical Doppelganger Machine, The Machine is a statistical comparison tool. It takes a reference season — in this case, Kispert’s 2024-25 campaign and compares it to every player season since 1977-78 across 14 stat/data categories. The Machine’s algorithm calculates how similar each of those player seasons are to the reference season.
While information like position and height are not factors, players tend to get stat comps from a similar position group. In other words, centers tend to get centers and bigger forwards, point guards tend to get other guards, and so on. There are exceptions, and the exceptions are almost always interesting.
The Machine itself was made in part as a reaction to the silly tendency us humans have of making comparisons based on superficial criteria like skin color, place of birth, perceived athleticism, and “he kinda looks like…”
Naturally, I write the preceding sentence for the article in which a 6-7 white guy’s comps are a bunch of 6-6 to 6-8 white guys.
More seriously, Kispert’s comps mostly fit a theory I have about the NBA generally and him specifically. The simple version of this theory is that the age of specialists is largely over.
There was a time when a three-point specialist held significant value, even if he wasn’t a good defender. I haven’t tried to pinpoint when the specialist era ended except to say that it had drawn to a close at least a year or two before the Wizards parted ways with Ernie Grunfeld.
As you’ll see below, Kispert’s comps are mostly good-shooting wings and forwards from 8-10 years ago. For the most part, they were defensively challenged, though they were still impactful players at their peaks.
But in today’s NBA, players need to be able to do several different things well. Specialists may still carve out a role – especially during the regular season — but unless they’re absolutely elite at their specialty, they lose value in the playoffs.
Kispert’s specialty is his three-point shooting. Unfortunately, except for one season, his shooting has been pretty good but not great. That’s fine for a team bottoming out. It’s less fine for a team that wants to play for something. Which is a long way of saying it would be great to see Kispert try to maximize his potential on a team with a superstar.
Next through the Statistical Doppelganger Machine: Tristan Vukcevich.