The New-Look Wolves: The Rashad McCants Project

At the end of the month, the Timberwolves are going to have to decide what they are going to do with Rashad McCants. Their deadline to pick up his option for next year is the 31st. Despite protestations about his last season, there are several reasons the Timberwolves should keep McCants. They are, in particular order:

1) Depth. With the Walker/Davis trade completed, the shooting guards are McCants, Gerald Green, Greg Buckner, and Marko Jaric. Of course, Buckner and Jaric are journeymen, and Green is young scorer who will probably be spending as much time at 3 as the 2.

2) Trade considerations. McCants is seen as a project, which is more or less accurate to where he is right now. If the Wolves don’t pick up his option, they’re guaranteeing that they won’t be able to trade him if they sour on the project. No rebuilding team would ever want to take him in for half a season, and if he’s good enough that a playoff team wants him in order to make a run, he’s good enough to stay in Minnesota.

3) He’s hasn’t recovered from mircofracture surgery yet. If you check out Wikipedia, it claims that the surgery takes at least 4 months of recovery. Most news stories on it in context to basketball seem to place it at 6 months. But it seems like it takes a lot longer for players to get to full speed.

To figure out a timetable for McCants’ return to form, I looked at several players who had microfracture surgery (Pat Garrity, Adrian Griffin, Penny Hardaway, Mat Harpring, Allan Houston, Jason Kidd, Kerry Kittles, Eduado Najera, Zach Randolph, John Stockton, Amare Stoudemire, and Chris Webber). There are several other players who have had the surgery but I didn’t include for various reasons, mainly those who retired after surgery and those that have yet to return.

Before diving into recovery times for microfracture surgery, I want to make clear that this uses a very small sample size and includes players of various heights, ages, and positions. So the conclusions from this are somewhere between “wild guess” and “informed opinion”.

Let’s start with the overall picture of the players’ performances (for simplicity and my own general sanity, “Year 1” refers to the season before the surgery took place, “Year 2” refers to the season played within a year of the surgery, and “Year 3” refers to the first season after a full year had passed since surgery).

Years	FG%	TS%	3P%	FT%	TR/48
Year 1	46.66%	55.70%	37.35%	79.77%	7.606
Year 2	43.86%	51.05%	36.18%	76.36%	8.554
Year 3	46.12%	53.53%	34.01%	77.85%	9.492

Years	AS/48	ST/48	TO/48	BK/48	PTS/48
Year 1	5.227	1.713	2.852	0.623	23.09
Year 2	6.162	1.723	3.134	0.456	21.79
Year 3	4.944	1.888	3.071	0.714	22.04

One of the things I find most interesting about this is that the statistics that are indicators of athleticism (rebounds, blocks, and steals) all increase in the third year. My armchair analysis would be that it returning players are attempting to demonstrate their full health, while simultaneously warding off any bench players who might have designs on keeping the minutes gained while they were on the IR.

Of course, Rashad McCants is a unique case. At 21 he’s the youngest player I can find who has logged NBA minutes, gone under the knife, and returned. Here’s how he’s done during his two seasons in the NBA:

Year	FG%	TS%	3P%	FT%	TR/48
2005-2006	45.05%	53.90%	37.22%	73.58%	5.029
2006-2007	35.03%	45.43%	26.67%	68.97%	4.065

Year	AS/48	ST/48	TO/48	BK/48	PF/48	PTS/48
2005-2006	2.215	1.547	3.024	0.774	6.189	22.048
2006-2007	3.286	2.249	3.459	0.605	6.141	15.914

Notice the prodigious drop in scoring, even beyond the norm for players coming right back from having surgery. The athletic statistics have decreased slightly, but could be within the year to year variation. But does this mean the Wolves should expect last season’s McCants back? Well, there is no simple way to answer that question. The two closest players in age to McCants that returned to the NBA are Zach Randolph and Amare Stoudemire. Both came back successfully from surgery, but neither of them (6’9’ and 6’10”) fit McCants in terms of body. The closest in terms of height are Jason Kidd (28,984 minutes played before surgery), Kerry Kittles (9,292 minutes), and Adrian Griffin (5060 minutes). None of them are great matches. Kidd was ten years older than McCants when he had his surgery, Kittles missed an entire season, and Adrian Griffin was a backup who took two years before he saw more than 1000 minutes in another season. Here are the numbers for the three players:

Player	GP	Min	FG%	TS%	3P%	FT%
Griffin Year 1	74	1373	43.32%	46.29%	25.00%	84.38%
Griffin Year 2	19	133	27.78%	27.83%	50.00%	0.00%
Griffin Year 3	69	667	36.02%	41.86%	22.22%	75.00%

Player	TR/48	AS/48	ST/48	TO/48	BK/48	PF/48	PTS/48
Griffin Year 1	9.229	3.671	2.692	1.643	0.21	5.489	11.362
Griffin Year 2	6.857	3.609	2.526	1.083	0.722	6.135	3.97
Griffin Year 3	10.51	3.814	3.094	2.159	0.288	5.613	10.867

Player	GP	Min	FG%	TS%	3P%	FT%
Kidd Year 1	67	2449	38.37%	48.48%	32.08%	82.73%
Kidd Year 2	66	2436	39.77%	50.61%	36.03%	73.96%
Kidd Year 3	80	2978	40.44%	52.60%	35.19%	79.51%
Player	TR/48	AS/48	ST/48	TO/48	BK/48	PF/48	PTS/48
Kidd Year 1	8.389	12.113	2.391	4.194	0.274	2.156	20.305
Kidd Year 2	9.616	10.739	2.424	3.291	0.177	2.167	18.739
Kidd Year 3	9.349	10.831	2.418	3.095	0.467	2.531	17.166

Player	GP	Min	FG%	TS%	3P%	FT%
Kittles Year 1	62	1896	43.70%	53.52%	40.00%	79.53%
Kittles Year 2	0	0	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%
Kittles Year 3	82	2601	46.60%	54.25%	40.50%	74.42%
Player	TR/48	AS/48	ST/48	TO/48	BK/48	PF/48	PTS/48
Kittles Year 1	5.696	3.595	2	1.418	0.481	3.038	20.43
Kittles Year 2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Kittles Year 3	5.075	3.986	2.399	2.012	0.572	1.993	20.337

These numbers offer 2/3rds of a hope for McCants. Kittles and Kidd were able to come back in Year 3 and shoot better percentages across the board, while not losing much on their non-scoring statistics (though Kittles did a better job in maintain his performance).

Of course, we can see that McCants has played remarkably well in this preseason. And as a point of comparison, he has done far better in this preseason than he did in his rookie year.

Preseason	G	Min	FG%	3P%	TS%	TR/48
2005 Rashad McCants	8	189	46.80%	47.40%	53.70%	4.83
2007 Rashad McCants	5	145	52.00%	33.30%	63.20%	4.3

Preseason	AST/48	STL/48	BLK/48	TO/48	PF/48	PTS/48
2005 Rashad McCants	3.3	1.52	0.76	3.05	8.89	23.87
2007 Rashad McCants	4.3	1.99	0	4.63	5.3	25.16

Of course, part of the reason for his success is that it’s the preseason, and established players aren’t playing as hard or getting regular minutes, and there are quite a few bubble players who are still with teams (I would personally like to see Carmelo or Kobe play a full forty-eight, just to see if they can break Chamberlain’s scoring record). And McCants has 1 ½ seasons of experience in the NBA. Nevertheless, these numbers seem to demonstrate that he is on the right track for his recovery, and should be a valuable part of the Wolves for the next few years.

--All stats are from http://www.dougstats.com, except for the Timberwolves Preseason stats, which are from the Timberwolves homepage.