Cam Thomas has been ranked as the worst ”number one” option in the NBA by Yahoo Sports.
Yahoo Sports defines a team’s “number one” option as the player who teammates look for down the stretch and opponents specifically game plan against. Thomas is ranked below Kyle Kuzma from the Washington Wizards, Jalen Green from the Houston Rockets and Anfernee Simons from the Portland Trail Blazers.
“[The number one] bails you out if possessions go haywire,” the article writes. “He gets his.”
The ranking, while likely factoring in that the Nets will have one of the worst records in the NBA this upcoming season, fails to acknowledge that Thomas is truly yet to step into a primary option role. The former LSU guard took the most shots and averaged the most points on the Nets last season, but the “alpha” was Mikal Bridges.
A closer look at stats in the clutch supports that. The NBA defines clutch time as “the final five minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime when the score is within five points.”
Last season, Mikal Bridges was ninth overall over the entire NBA regular season in “clutch” field goal attempts. Bridges shot 49.4% on his 79 attempts, a figure that would’ve placed him sixth in the league for players with more than 60 attempts. Only bonafide all-stars Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nikola Jokic, LeBron James, Stephen Curry and also the Rockets’ Alperen Sengun (indicating Green is not Houston’s first option) shot better than Bridges.
Thomas, on the other hand, was 39th in regular season “clutch” field goal attempts. He went 13-for-47 from the field (27.7%) and a lowly 3-for-23 from three (13%). That can perhaps be considered indicative of future struggles as a “number one” option, but it cannot be conclusive since the Nets’ context will be vastly different this season.
One of new head coach Jordi Fernández’s first tasks will be to determine who the Nets’ head honcho on the court is, although signs seem to point towards the Spaniard favoring an equitable system of play. It’s also possible that Nic Claxton — fresh off signing a 4-year, $100 million contract with Brooklyn this summer — will get a chance to be the “number one” in a way that hasn’t existed for him since college.
Thomas is the most comfortable and toughest shotmaker on the team, which will likely always be the case for as long as he’s a Net player, but his innate scoring ability needs to be harnessed in the right direction long term.
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