On Monday, I was joined by very special guest Tim Capstraw on The Backcourt, and we continued with player recap episodes, discussing the 2025 seasons of Cam Thomas and Trendon Watford.
Thomas, now at the end of his rookie contract and hitting restricted free agency, is an understandably polarizing player. He gets buckets, and hits shots that very, very few NBA players could dream of taking without getting benched, much less hitting.
If you’ve read my writing on Thomas, you know that I’ve often critiqued his offensive game, and said it’s unlikely that he’ll become a primary option for a good NBA team. I don’t even care about his defense, which is quite bad, even by the standards of a guard in their early 20’s. But that stuff can change.
In the episode, I note his undeniable improvement over the past two seasons, since he played just 25 games this season. Per Cleaning the Glass, he posted a preposterous 33.1% usage rate, and yet!
Thomas’ assist-rate was near the league-average, he turned some of those pull-up twos into pull-up threes and turned in his most efficient scoring season to date, and his turnover rate remained quite low. In Capstraw’s words, it was definitely a small-sample size, but it didn’t feel like a fluke. In his final two games of the season, Thomas seemed more committed than ever to making the right play...
In the episode, I mention that he has an astonishingly similar stat profile to Jaylen Brown over the past two seasons, buffing out the sample size, and I’ll expound on that here.
Both sharing sky-high usage-rates, Brown’s true-shooting % over the past two seasons is 56.8, a couple points below league-average. Thomas’ is 56.0. Brown’s assist-rate (the percentage of his team’s field-goals he assisted on while on the floor) was 16.6 in 2024, and 21.4 this season. Thomas’ was 15.7, then 22.9.
Each are slightly better-than-average at preventing turnovers. Each take about 40% of their shots from the mid-range, but the key difference is Brown gets to the rack for 30% of his shots, as opposed to Thomas’ 20%, and is a more efficient finisher there.
Nevertheless, Brown makes $60 million a year, and Thomas will have to barter to get $20 million. I’m highly skeptical of each of them turning into championship-level #1s, but honestly, this type of analysis is far too simplistic in this era of the NBA. Perhaps Tyrese Haliburton, who I love, is still waiting to make his first Conference Finals appearance if his playoff opponents weren’t always injured, and is an underwhelming #1 option. Nothing is absolute.
Cam Thomas is improving, and I get specific about those improvements on the podcast.
As for Trendon Watford, it’s nice to see a defined role for the funky, jumbo-sized ball-handler. He needs to stop turning the ball over, shoot more threes, and become a better defensive rebounder, all of which could continue turning him into a matchup nightmare off the bench.
Whether or not the unrestricted free agent returns to Brooklyn next year is anybody's guess, but Watford appears to be a real NBA player, even if he does have warts.
After the New York Liberty play the Chicago Sky this Thursday, I’ll be on vacation for a few days. But when I get back, I look forward to starting scouting reports of potential Nets draftees; if there is a player you particularly want to read about, comment below. In the meantime:
**YouTube:**
**Apple Music:** [**https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-backcourt-episode-29-5-19/id1775713457?i=1000709011285**](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-backcourt-episode-29-5-19/id1775713457?i=1000709011285)
**Spotify**: [**https://open.spotify.com/episode/4tuTBMSDQksxMJU3zrarEy?si=8d35cef53e1d4649**](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4tuTBMSDQksxMJU3zrarEy?si=8d35cef53e1d4649)