During his time acclimating to the NBA, dealing with experimental rosters, and the Spurs’ overall early-season struggles, Victor Wembanyama fell out of contention for Rookie of the Year, and Chet Ho Holmgren was replaced by Chet Holmgren, a skilled second-year player who put up almost (but not quite) impressive numbers and contributed to The Thunder’s surprising title contender contributed. That’s enough for some to redefine ROY as an “All-Rookie” rather than the best overall player and disparage Wimby, apparently including former NBA sharpshooter JJ Redick.
He’s always good at hot topics, so I don’t necessarily remember that, but on the latest episode of his podcast, The Old Man and Three Things, he officially apologized for shutting out Winby on the ROY issue in January. To say he made an impression would be putting it lightly, and fully recognize that Wimby has improved since then, thanks in part to lineup changes and the lifting of his playing time limit.
Redick went on to discuss improvements in his game, such as better shot selection, balance, and tighter ballhandling, and went over some of the crazy stats and records he’s broken over the past few months (most of which we’ve already have heard of it and covered it here), but there’s one I’d never heard of until now: Wimby is the highest-scoring-per-minute rookie since Michael Jordan in 1984-85, with 0.72.
We’ve seen statistical comparisons to big men like David Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwon and Shaquille O’Neal, but this may be the first time we’ve heard him mentioned alongside the GOAT himself.Of course, Winby has one dragon There’s still a long way to go as an overall player to even be considered at this level, but it’s a great starting point.
You can watch a clip of Redick below. It was a delightful 20 minutes of apologies and statistics.