After a trip through guesstimating old-time NBA stats, we now return to a Bullets Forever August tradition: running players through my Statistical Doppelganger Machine.
The Machine compares a reference seasons to all the other player seasons through NBA history across 14 stat categories including age, playing time, box score stats (pace adjusted), and PPA (my overall production metric). The idea here is to identify players with similar on-court production while moving beyond superficial traits like size, perceived athleticism, or skin color.
Let’s turn to today’s “reference season” — the rookie year of Bub Carrington.
At times, Carrington looked great. At others...well...not so great. But, he was the 14th pick in the draft, and he’s just 20 years old. His 59 PPA indicates he was well below average last season, which is perfectly normal for any rookie, and especially normal for a teenager.
Also, he was inconsistent, which is perfectly normal for a teenaged rookie.
Carrington’s was relatively strong getting defensive rebounds and generating assists while avoiding turnovers. His offensive efficiency was poor — a bit more than 10 points per possessions below league average. Again, that’s fine for a teenaged rookie. It’s something that should improve as he physically matures and gains NBA experience.
The Machine’s results are a fairly optimistic underscore of how “normal” Carrington’s rookie year was. Here we go:
Let me know in the comments who you want to see run through The Machine next.