This Is Way Scarier Than We Thought...

This is way scarier than we thought. Nikola Jokic just gave Wendell Carter Jr. some serious respect. With a new season ahead, the question is becoming harder to ignore. Are we about to see a breakout year from WCJ? Or is he simply who we thought he was? We'll break all this down and more on today's episode of Magic Digest. What's good, Winniken folk? It's your big Unc Eric back again, man. The season is getting closer and closer as preseason basketball is on the way. Man, big shout out to the women's FIBA USA team bringing home the gold, man. Girls out there playing, but we got to say this European or international talent, man, just like in the men's game, is getting better and better every year. So I'm definitely excited about the Olympic 28 team to see what that's looking like. But for now, big, big shots out to another stellar victory for the women's team. And while we're talking about victory, we got a big Anthony Black episode coming. We've been talking about him a lot recently. 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Trade $25 with code DigestNBA and get 25 added to your account instantly. Again, big shots to our friends over at Kalshi. Now, let's just go ahead and get into this Wendell Carter episode, man. He's somebody that I haven't really talked about much on this podcast because I'll be honest, I have very mixed feelings about him. I like what he can do, but I almost feel like he's playing out of place. I read a comment where it was like, this team has a bunch of power forwards. If we're looking at Paulo, if we're looking at Franz, if we're looking at Wendell, I think all three of them would be ideal power forwards next to a proper center. But we have Wendell playing the five. And if we look at this recent interview by Nikoli Jokic, he has some really interesting things to say about Wendell Carter Jr. And a couple other guys in the league. I think he was doing the superstar humble thing that he likes to do a little bit too much. He put some sauce on it. But let's just go into it. This is Nikoli Jokic on the basketball spear. He said, who guards me the best? Well, everybody. The league is just as talented defensively as it is offensively. If he can Zubac and Yusef Nurkic, they're chubby like me. So it's hard for me to move them. Rudy Gobert. I know people say all kinds of things about him, but I think he's a great defender. He showed that in the playoffs. Jalen Durr from Detroit. Wendell Carter Jr. They're smaller and tough to deal with. And honestly, I was like, man, you gotta put a little sauce on it. But I had to go back and look at the actual numbers. Now, last year, the Magic played Denver twice. And it was rather early in the season, winning one and losing one. Now, if we look at Wendell Carter Jr. stats from the game that they lost. Let's see. Let's pull those up right here. We have Wendell with 26 points, eight rebounds. A plus seven plus minus. And then from three point, he shot four of seven from the three. Now, keep that in mind. All right. This was a game that if we're going to get into it, this was a game that, yeah, nobody really for the Magic played great. This was a game where I want to say that Desmond Bain had a negative 15 plus minus. And this is when Tyus Jones was still on the team, taking up minutes and just looking terrible with that negative 20 plus minus. Oh, yeah. The Tyus Jones. Who remembers the Tyus Jones minutes from last year? But Wendell Carter was one of the guys who played him very well. Even in the game where they won, he didn't play as well. But he definitely has the body, the size and the strength to match up with somebody like Jokic, one of these top tier NBA big men. And what makes him so special is that he can hit the shot. He has had moments when the shot looked amazing. And when it does, it's like, oh, he's providing that spacing. He's also able to get rebounds and, again, play 99th percentile defense. If we take a look at the matchup, let's look at the matchup. And this comes from Ryan Kaminski over at Sports Illustrated. He just basically gives up what Wendell looks like playing against a Jokic or even other top tier centers. Offensively, Carter's mix of the three-point shot stretching Jokic out from deep while being quicker on drives opens up the pump fake fly by and drive by any time the Joker commits to the closeout too hard. Carter's defensive versatility and mobility help to switch between positions while his strength, hands, footwork and timing allow him to keep up with, get up and under and hold his own defending Jokic. And, you know, at the end of the day, it really is about what he's able to do, how he can contribute in that starting five. We've talked about it before. We don't have a lot of options to go out and make the splashy move. The Magic have brought in Nikola Vujovic, but he's going to be splitting minutes with Goga Batasde on the second unit. I think he'll be brought in more as that stretch-the-floor guard from the big man, especially from that second unit. If he can get out there and we kind of stack guys like Franz and Paolo to open up the lane to give them more space, even a two-man game. If he can get, let's say, him and Anthony Black on the weak side with the pick-and-roll or the pick-and-pop, because we know this time in his career, Vujovic is probably going to pop out to the corner. Then we can have Paolo flashing from the other end because you're going to want to put somebody out there on Vujovic to hit that three. But if Carter can get back to his true ways of knocking that three-point down, that at a 40%, but get up closer to 35% to 37% on three-plus attempts a game, I think that will be game-breaking. Let's look at his stats right now from last year. Give me a second as these take a little second to pull up. But we can see last year, I mean, it's a lot of mouths to feed on this one, no magic tea. And I think sometimes Carter can get lost in the shuffle. Like he can get, you know, when we got Paolo cooking, when Franz is back doing his thing. And we don't have Suggs, who has been our top playmaker, you know, really fighting Wendell. It's a lot of fighting for his shot off of his rebounds. But if we could ever get somebody in there to establish a nice two-man game for him to just feed him, he don't need to be fed 15 times a game. But, you know, I like teams that come out and get the big man going early. So that means they're running harder. That means they're fighting on defense a little bit harder because, yeah, you don't got them a bucket, an easy bucket here and there. So we look at 11.8 points last year, 7.4 rebounds. I would love to see him up around nine, 10 rebounds per game, especially if we can get that to about four offensive rebounds a game. So if he's giving us four offensive rebounds, five to six defensive, oh man, he's just another level that creates shots, not for the whole team, not just for the whole team, but for him as well. And then let's get to his shooting. Last year, 31.9%, three points on, it was about three points. It was about three attempts per game. Again, if we can get that up to 34, 35 in that percentile, in that same amount of attempts, then that just really gives the magic. One, it gives them better shooting overall. Magic have been dreadful as a shooting team. That just helps the team in general. And it gives us more spacing, clears the lane for Paolo to get in there and do his business on the offensive end. But I'm very interested. What do you guys think? Is there an ability for Wendell Carter Jr. to break out even further? Or in year nine, is this just the guy who he is? Will his combination with Sean Sweeney bring out something on the defensive end that reinvigorates him and has him, you know, maybe in second team defensive player of the year potential? You know, I'm very interested to see. I would love to know what you guys think about it. Down below in the comments, tap in, get involved. Let me know what you think. I'll be actually posting two comments from a recent video. It's tomorrow's video about Anthony Black. I love when you guys give me opposing views, but you actually back it up with some real interesting conversation. It's something to bite into. You know, I love it here on the Magic Digest. I'm going to get out of here. It's your big Uncle Eric. Until next time, this is Magic Digest.