Cam Reddish has been steadily improving from his dismal first month in the league where he shot like 4% from the field. He’s been a solid 40% shooter for the past two months, which isn’t a fantastic number when compared to the rest of the league but IS a fantastic number when you compare it to his brickerific introduction to the NBA. That’s the kind of improvement that takes him from “literally worst season of all time since short white dudes in the 50’s were shooting one-handed push shots” to “decent, if unremarkable, season for a young player”.
There are probably better ways to evaluate players than simple FG% (which doesn’t take Reddish’s alleged defense acumen into account at all) but my simple brain is quite literally incapable of understanding any stat that’s not just a number derived from other box-score stats that are also just numbers. It’s lucky for Reddish, then, that he’s showing improvement in one of the few stats that I am able to comprehend enough to notice that there is improvement being shown. What if he was also improving in some arcane mystery stat like VORP or DBPM? I would be totally clueless. I am totally clueless. I once tried to read a layman’s explanation of VORP, but I got bored two sentences into the project and watched Honey Boo Boo clips on YouTube instead. I guess I’m not enough of a layman to understand those things.
Reddish went 0-of-6 from three in this game, so there’s still some work to be done before he can claim the “player who is most like Paul George” throne from the person currently sitting in it (Paul George). However, there’s reason for the passengers of the Cam Reddish hype train to be optimistic. The ones who didn’t jump out the windows in fear of a seemingly imminent derailment, anyway.