A somewhat silly ESPN feature asks who the next young NBA star will be. Three panelists write about Adam Morrison. What will become of him, I couldn’t say. I do notice, however, that nobody mentions Gerald Wallace in this regard. It seems to me, though, worth noting that Wallace and Morrison appear to play the same position and to be on the same team. What’s more, as best I can tell, Wallace is Charlotte’s best player. Since it’s the Bobcats, I haven’t ever actually seen them play so the “best I can tell” isn’t necessarily very good. But the numbers indicate that he’s very good. The Wages of Wins guys give him a WP48 rating of 0.335 which is quite high.
What’s more, that’s not one of these WoW idiosyncracies. John Hollinger gives him a 21.35 PER and says he’s a good defender. He scores in modest quantities but very efficiently, rebounds well, and gets a lot of blocks and steals. I’m not seeing superstardom here by any means, but he’s good, and it seems inherently problematic for a team to have its best prospect and its best player playing the same position.