Is Wilson the One?
It has recently been reported Wilson Chandler has added Toronto as a possible destination as a restricted free agent. He visited with the Raptors yesterday.
The question becomes obvious: how good is Wilson Chandler and is he a material upgrade from our current wings?
Source: basketball-reference.com (data for Raptors’ players are for this year only)
Chandler is a more effective scorer than the most of the Raptors’ current wings, a little worse rebounder and a bit more of a “black hole” (doesn’t pass as often).
Source: basketball-reference.com (data for Raptors’ players are for this year only)
The other metrics tell a similar story: he generally has posted a PER below 15 (the average NBA player) and has similar scores to both James Johnson and Linas Kleiza. His 2 year adjusted +/- suggests a positive contribution (2.01) as does his Regularized Adjusted +/- (1.5) while his WP48 of 0.801 suggests he’s a slightly below average player.
He would certainly be an upgrade over Rasual Bulter and Gary Forbes (the latter being much more of a “2” and perhaps less comparable), but – as it always does – comes down to a matter of salary and contract length. The challenge is he is a restricted free agent for Denver, which means they can match any offer. Thus, the Raptors will have to be careful not to “reach to high” to prevent this.
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