Brandon Clarke is leading all 2019 draftees in the enigmatic and impenetrable stat known as “Win Shares”. If you want more details on what a “Win Share” is, I urge you to find someone who isn’t me to talk to, because I don’t have any. All I know is that it’s a stat, it’s on basketball-reference, it involves math or something that is adjacent to math, and better players generally have a higher number for it.
And it’s not even close: Clarke is at 1.2 WS, second place is Tyler Herro at 0.8. Think about all the rookies you are hyped for, all the rookies that get all the press coverage, they’re all worse than Clarke. And it’s not just that he’s actually playing minutes while other rookies languish in smaller roles; he’s got the most WS per minute of players who have played a decent amount this season (sorry Mfiondu Kabengele, 14 minutes is not enough in this scenario).
Certainly, on a per-minute basis, Clarke has the look of a very solid NBA player. 20 points, 10 rebounds per 36, he could easily be what is termed a “20-10 guy”. And he’s scoring those points very efficiently, at 64 percent from the field along with good three-point and free-throw shooting. He’s never going to win ROTY of the Year, because he was a late first-round selection and no one cares about what’s going on in Memphis, but if Zion Williamson was putting up his stats, you know people would never stop freaking out.