Franz Wagner Was Closer to Rookie of the Year Than You Think

The way the vast majority of NBA fans view Franz Wagner is quite out of the ordinary considering what he accomplished during his first season in the NBA; It could be a byproduct of playing in a smaller market that was in the midst of a clear rebuilding phase during the 2021-22 season or simply because his game is not necessarily the flashiest or because he is not a particularly useful ball handler. high for his team, regardless of the narrative surrounding his

rookie

year

, I want to take a look at what he was doing to hopefully shed some much-deserved light on how incredible he was and what his

rookie

season means to him in the future as one of the main pillars of Orlando.

His scoring was largely ignored during the Rookie of the Year race despite being the most efficient scorer among all rookies who finished the

year

in the top 10 in points per game, scoring 15.2 points per game, the fourth most of any rookie with 56.2 true shots, these numbers are really solid for a first-year guy, but verbatim statistics are worthless without understanding where and how those points were generated with that level of efficiency today, nothing does NBA fans salivate more than players who are built like big men and can operate effectively as ball handlers, which is something that definitely applies to Franz Wagner, so I'm a little surprised.

While he wasn't being hailed as this giant offensive play-maker during his rookie season, today's NBA goaltending puts a lot of emphasis on big men who can run the pick and roll and it's something Franz Wagner does very well. Far from being slow and I've seen some criticism about his athletic burst, which feels really unwarranted when you start to get into the film, you can see that he has a very quick first step when attacking the basket from screens and uses it very tight. handle to maintain ball security when navigating defenses the shock creation he has exhibited in creating for himself in the pick-and-roll is very, very promising here he is going to switch to klieba and attack him during the dribble, he will stop and will step again into a mid-range pump fake causing Khliba to bite him before making a very deft move towards the spike to set up the floater.

In this play we can see him navigate the defense in the pick and roll very, very well, he has Marquis Chris on him. He and Franz are going to cross to the right side of him and go downhill. He recognizes that Luca is still covering Wendell Carter Jr in the rush and uses that Carter Jr role as a makeshift screen to force Chris behind him, allowing Franz to finish at the basket, the advantages of having a guy who is six feet, nine inches and can run the pick and roll effectively are all the mismatches he creates, even if you put an interchangeable big on him, he's just a big guy with solid athleticism who will be able to have a good chance to finish, even if you throw him a defender with solid length and height, he will clearly be a player that will thrive with a lot of space around him, as we can see in this play, they start the pick and roll high with cole anthony and with all this space in the middle he won't have any problem in taking advantage of that space to make an easy dunk.

One thing that's really intriguing to me about his game is the potential for a float running back to develop as part of your scoring arsenal: he already has great touch and showed signs during his rookie season that he would be able to knocking down floaters and runners at a fairly high level, something that would really make him an unpredictable scoring threat throughout this final package. starts to round out when you look at his footwork when he gets to the rim, Franz is really excellent at using his height, specifically his long legs to get around his defenders and get to the rim, even if they are technically in good position to defend it. is still able to get around them before they can reach them simply because his legs are long enough to take longer strides than a laterally moving defender can recover from their ground coverage, is truly impressive as here he comes out of this side pick and roll and runs into mason plumlee sliding to cover his drive blades, he'll just take a big step to split his defenders, giving him enough room to softly launch the shot and here, coming off carter jr's screen, he's covered by middleton and george hill.

He's going to hesitate a little before quickly changing pace, bursting between them with the stride and forcing Portis to do a really difficult hip rotation to help before Portis can get there. Franz is already at the basket to finish now I don't want to spend a lot of time

think

ing about his ability as a three point shooter because it is an aspect of his game that I

think

most people are familiar with at this point . We know he will be incredible operating without the ball in his hands. On the perimeter he shot 37.7 percent on three-pointers from the catch last season, making him one of the five most efficient catch-and-shoot rookies in the league.

The other reason I don't want to dwell on this too much is because a lot of people have labeled him as a 3 and D wing, which I think is a really reductionist view of his skill set, so know that yes, he can take down While we're on the topic of what he's capable of doing off the ball, then we should probably talk about his ability as a cutter. Franz Wagner was a 94th percentile cutter as a rookie. That's not the 94th percentile among rookies. It is the 94th percentile among the entire NBA that he has. Very high level feel to anticipate how defenses will react to your teammates on offense and allows you to think one step ahead and get to your spots before the defense can even realize what is happening.

We can see that feeling of the game in this play. magic runs the staggered screen action up top and results in rj barrett falling off the sheets in the corner to protect suggs' potential drive. You can see rj's second step towards suggs. Franz immediately makes a baseline cut towards the basket for an easy two point, this play here is executed perfectly, Bomba will move towards the corner dragging his defender with him as that happens, Franz will approach the half court line and the Clippers will change the batum and put shamit over carter jr., cole anthony. He's going to feed Carter Jr in the high post and with all the space created from the initial move at the start of the play, Franz simply pops up the middle for Carter Jr to find him for an easy dunk, one of the reasons why That he can be such an effective cutter is due in large part to his chemistry with Cole Anthony on this play Cole is going to drive forcing the defense to collapse on him in the paint Franz's man stays to provide help at the rim and Franz He goes to cut into the paint as Cole continues to pull the defense with him, allowing an easy pass to Franz on the cut for an easy dunk.

His off-ball game is already very well rounded and he will be a perfect pairing alongside a primary ball handler like Paulo Bencaro and while his off-ball ability is exciting on its own, I am quite convinced that he has a lot to offer from a scoring point of view. creation with the ball, to me it seems quite unlikely that he is simply a guy who plays without the ball. I think there's a lot more to his game than we have a fairly limited sample of possessions he had in isolation this season, but in the 52 possessions in which he was operating in isolation he was fantastic, averaging 1.08 points per possession in isolation. , making him an 88th percentile iso scorer.

He showed that he is more than capable of taking guys down off the dribble by using that extremely tight and fundamentally sound grip to attack his defenders. He doesn't have what I would describe as a quote-unquote deep bag of moves, but he fights back. that lack of tricks with the ability to quickly change pace and get by defenders, he's able to turn on the afterburners at any given moment and it's really hard to anticipate if you're the defender, I don't necessarily think he's going to be the main one. creator, but he has all the room in the world to grow to the point where he can offer some level of additional creation outside of everything he already offers without the ball in his hands, but where, in my opinion, lies the greatest opportunity for he is a giant playmaker and complementary initiator in the midfield.

I've already covered a bit about how he was able to score in the pick and roll, but that pick and roll prowess extends to the way he plays and he is also excellent at taking advantage of the defense. attention he deserves on his drives to get some easy kicks to open up his teammates on the perimeter the frontcourt chemistry between him and wendell carter jr is really exciting plus they play against each other like they have played together for years and Having a player like Franz who can start the offense inside and find a lob threat like Wendell makes for a really tough time on defense.

They have a chance to get really fun with how they orchestrate the half-court offense with multiple big men on the floor. On this play, Wendell gets the screen

closer

to the high post to receive the pass.

franz

heads to the paint to receive an entry pass from wendell and when

franz

goes up, otto porter jr comes to provide help, leaving bomb open in the dunk spot for franz to leave it for two easy points here, franz and bomb they start the pick and roll bomber throws towards the paint, but in the meantime, carter jr is left completely unprotected and simply cuts towards the basket for franz to send it to him. him for an easy pass to finish at the rim, think of all the opportunities this team will have with multiple big lineups with paolo franz wendell mo bamba which is a lineup full of big men that can facilitate relatively well and will create tons of mismatches for defense now I wouldn't be doing Franz any favors if I didn't talk about his defense because he was really a good defender last season, he's already very good at defending the pick-and-roll because of that crazy combination between size and quickness, his sense of The game extends from the offensive side to the defensive side, plus he is excellent at timing his contests and is very disciplined in making sure the ball handlers don't take him to school.

He's one of those guys that just because you can beat them off the dribble or lose them on a screen doesn't mean you're out of the woods because he's quick and agile enough to recover and provide competition and, in some cases, block your shot. if you dont do it. Be careful with him around as well due to the fact that he is six foot nine and has the potential to be a very versatile defender, potentially defending one through four or one through five, so with all that said, what is the real outlook? for Franz not only next season but also?

Going forward, going forward in his career, given how ready he was for the NBA last season, I really don't expect him to suffer a major slump in his second year, and if anything, he'll probably have one of the biggest improvements of anyone. the boys. of his class, given that he's not really a guy that's necessarily going to have to deal with quote-unquote growing pains, a promising sign that he'll eventually become a star-caliber player is if you take a look at how he ranks in the five of Brain. set of metrics, which is a tool I like to use to look at how a player's production in the five main areas of the game compares to other players throughout NBA history if you want a more detailed overview of what exactly is Cerebro's set of five metrics.

You can check out my video on Kelden Johnson where I discuss a little more that Franz had a pure scoring prowess of 70, a 3-point efficiency of 69, overall floor skills of 67, big man skills of 60, and a defensive statistical impact of 73 , the only other. players 6 to 10 or more to achieve those numbers at any time in their careers cousins ​​demarcus kevin durant joel embiid karl anthony towns mark gassol chandler parsons nikolay jokic and nikola vusovich Even more impressive is that he is the only rookie with 610 or more in the history of the nba in achieving it Those numbers now I'm saying Franz is the next Kevin Durant, no, but the fact that his rough baseline is already on par with some really great players along with everything else I've discussed so far This point makes me pretty confident that he will eventually make it.

He's going to become a star level player, he just has so much versatility that you can use him however you want and from what we've seen so far, he should have no problem scaling up or down depending on what the situation calls for. Orlando takes a very equal approach to his offense, so it will be interesting to see how his shot distribution ends up next season, while his numbers may not put him in a position to beIn star talks in a couple of years, the play and production that's on display makes me feel pretty confident that he's more than capable of developing into a star-caliber player in the future, so what do you think of Franz in the future?

Do you think he will eventually be a star? What kind of numbers do you think he has? I'll be posting it next year, be sure to let me know in the comments below if you enjoyed this video and love the NBA. Consider hitting the subscribe button and leaving a like. That is the number one way to support me and help me continue doing. content I just released another episode of my podcast, the media pass, be sure to click the links in the description, check it out, thank you all so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.