It feels like the universe as a whole has forgotten about the fact that Wendell Carter Jr. is one of the most promising young scoring bigs in the league right now. And when I say “universe”, I really do mean the entire universe. Not only have humans from planet Earth lost track of WCJ and his limitless potential, but aliens from the planet Glumph have similarly forgotten that WCJ is turning out to be one of the better players coming out of the 2018 draft.
Part of the problem is that WCJ is overshadowed on his own team by Lauri Markkanen, Zach LaVine, and, to some extent, Coby White and Otto Porter (if he’s still alive…is he?). LaVine in particular uses up so many possessions that WCJ doesn’t really have the chance to have an “impact” game that tells the universe at large “hey, I’m way better than Kevin Knox and Mo Bamba, and I’m pretty much as good as Marvin Bagley!” If he could somehow convince LaVine to be a distributor for just one game, WCJ would get his chance to score thirty and burst into the collective NBA fans’ consciousness, but good luck ever convincing LaVine to do anything that doesn’t involve jacking up twenty shots a game.
Bulls fans will get triggered by this, but the only solution might be to trade WCJ. To the Bucks. For Thon Maker. That way, the Bucks can load-manage Giannis for the rest of the season, showcase WCJ as a premier young scoring bigman during the times when Giannis is out, and the Bulls get a high-upside guy who can sometimes catch a pass without dropping it and will often hustle for rebounds that his skinny frame has no hope of ever reaching. The fact that the Bucks don’t currently have Thon Maker on their roster poses no obstacles to this plan that I can see.