The Cam Whitmore Breakout is Upon Us….

The Cam Whitmore Breakout is Upon Us….

In the 2023 NBA draft, the Houston Rockets drafted a top prospect that fell to them at the number 20th overall pick. And two seasons after him getting inconsistent minutes and being drowned out on the bench because the amount of depth and talent that the Rockets had in their roster, they decided to trade him to a better situation in the Washington Wizards. A forward out of Villanova and his name is Cam Whitmore. Welcome to Basketball Intuition. I’m your host, Ethan Simon. Today we’re going to be talking about Cam Whitmore, the newest Washington Wizard. We’re going to be diving into Cam Whitmore’s game today, but I want to start out with a little statement. There are three main hesitations that people have when they talk about Cam Whitmore. Number one being tunnel vision scoring. Number two being his attitude and number three being his effort. And what I have to say about that is what do you expect? You have a very young emotional basketball player who is good enough to be playing on most rosters but simply isn’t because the amount of talent and depth that this roster has. So of course it’s going to be hard for him to keep his attitude and his effort in check when he’s been there for two seasons and he knows that he could be playing somewhere else but he’s not playing here. And then the tunnel vision scoring stuff. It’s like what do you expect if he plays 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 10 minutes, and then he gets a game where he plays 40 minutes. How do you expect him to act? Of course, he’s going to put up 15 shots. He’s Cam Whitmore. He’s a bucket getter. You didn’t draft Cam Whitmore to pass the ball. You didn’t draft Cam Whitmore to playmake. You drafted him to score. Like, look at this game log. Look how inconsistent it is. 22 minutes, 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 40 minutes, 7, 8, 2, 6, 7. Shout out to the Rockets for sending him to a situation where he actually could be able to thrive. and growing up a Wizards fan and growing up in the DMV, I’m sure he’s got to be happy to be home. But with that being said, the Wizards now have a lot of mouths to feed with Trey Johnson, Cam Whitmore, Bub Carrington, Khan George, Alex Sar, AJ Johnson. You got a lot of mouths to feed. So, I’m very interested to see how the Wizards are going to handle their rotations, especially in the first couple months of the season. But that’s enough of that. Let’s really dive into Cam Whitmore’s game. We’re going to start with his frame and his build and then get to his shooting. Okay, so Cam Whitmore is around 6’7 with a 68 1/2 in wingspan. He is somewhere around 230 lbs. is a really really nice frame for a young player to go along with a 40in vertical. This guy is crazy athletic and on top of that he just turned 21 years old yesterday at the time I’m recording this. Okay, now to the shooting. We’re going to look at his rookie year splits and his sophomore splits. Okay, so in his rookie year on catch and shoot threes on three attempts he shot 43% and on 1.7 pull-ups he only shot 23 1.5%. In his sophomore year on catch and shoot threes and one less attempt at 1.9 attempts he shot 33%. But last season, he was much more efficient with the pull-ups. He shot 0.1 less pull-ups, 1.6 pull-ups a game at 38%. I personally believe he’s going to bring those catch and shoot numbers up. For a young player, especially a young shooter that is a rhythm and confident shooter, if he’s not consistently in the game, it’s hard for him to get in a real rhythm. So, I do believe in a season or two with the Wizards, he’s going to be more consistent. In a couple more shooting splits, he shot 41% from the corner so far through his career. Very, very efficient. And he shot 35% above the break. He’s got a really nice looking jump shot. His catch and shoot motion is nice. His jump shot is fairly consistent. and it looks the same most of the time. And not only is he just a three-point shooter, he is also a mid-range shooter. He shot 40 plus% on pull-up midis both seasons that he played so far. And just this past season, he shot 45% on pull-up mid-ranges. And I absolutely love how he’s able to create separation to get these three-point shots in these mid-ranges because he has a fairly simple bag. It’s a lot of step backs, jab steps, hesitations, in-n-out moves, and crossovers. And just putting two of those together is enough to get him enough separation on his shot almost every single time. And not only is he just putting one or two of these together, sometimes he can put these all together and break you down. And like I mentioned, he is a confident shooter, which makes him a streaky shooter. Sometimes when he is missing, he’s in his head, but whenever he’s hitting, he is the hottest player on the court. And not only can Cam Whitmore just shoot the ball, he also finishes very well. When we go over to his finishing, he is a super explosive and fun dunker. He’s got some nice finger roll moves. He is a tough finisher. Whenever he puts that head down and he’s going to the basket, he’s not looking at anybody else. He is putting that head down and going to the basket. And one thing that I talk about a lot when it comes to slashing is there are a lot of players that are just trying to go around you. For example, a Trey Johnson type player. He is not going at your hip. He’s not going through you. He is going around you. But then you have the other kind of guys that I prefer. You have a Ken Whitmore who has the weight and the body to go at you. He is going at your hip. He is going through you. He’s going to put that shoulder in you and he’s going to get downhill. He can finish with force, but he also can finish with finesse. And another thing that I really like is he is able to finish with both hands. He’s not just a right-hand finisher. He can finish with the left and the right. And one thing we know about aggressive finishers is aggressive finishers get to the free throw line. You would love to see him get there more, but he has shown the ability to get to the free throw line even though he is mainly a jump shooter. One problem that you can have with his free throw shooting is that he is not as efficient as you’d like. His first season he shot like 65%. So his first season it was 68%. His second season it was 75%. That is improvement that we like to see. But also you would like to see him be able to get above 80%. His rookie year he was getting to the free throw line two and a half times a game, but this past season he was only getting there one and a half times a game. And I do want to mention, if you look at his numbers and you look at his minutes, you’re like, they’re not that far apart. In his rookie season, he played 19 minutes a game. And then this past season, he was playing 16 minutes a game. But if you look at him in his rookie season post Allstar break, he was playing almost 23 minutes a game. So 23 minutes versus 16 minutes is a pretty big difference. He was also extremely efficient in the restricted area, shooting 63% there. And also, I felt like he did a really good job attacking closeouts and getting downhill that way. And really, overall, I was just impressed by his finishing ability. Before I really dove into his game, I thought he was more of just a jump shooter. And of course, he is mainly a jump shooter, but he also absolutely can be a good slasher. If you’re still here and enjoying the video, make sure to hit that like button. It helps out a lot more than you realize. And you know, when we’re talking about Cam Whitmore, we’re talking about a score. This guy gets buckets. One of the problems, like I mentioned earlier in the video, that people have with him is that he’s a tunnel vision score and he doesn’t pass that much, but it’s like it’s Cam Whitmore. You didn’t draft him to pass the ball and playmake. You drafted him to get buckets and that’s what he does. And we could talk about his playmaking for another minute or so here. It’s not like he’s not making simple passes. like he makes simple passes and in the transition especially I thought he was a really great passer. We’re going to get to more of his transition play later, but again I thought he was really good passing in the transition and that was the best place where he was able to show off the passing ability. Now I want to get over to the defense and the rebounding. He is absolutely a positive defender. He also has a great frame and build to be a good defender. He is very switchable. He has the ability to guard guards and he also has the ability to guard forwards that are a little bit bigger than he is. I thought as an on ball defender he was really good. He fights hard around screens and he tries to stay with his man. But as a help defender, I thought he was pretty bad. And really for Cam, it’s all effort. If he just put more effort in on the help side, then he would be a better help defender. But from what I saw, he just wasn’t putting that much effort in on the help side. It’s not like he’s just getting lost off the ball or anything like that, but he’s just not helping that much on the help side. Also, another good thing about his defense is he does not foul that much. He was in the 90th percentile in foul percentage, which is a good thing. So, how foul percentage works is how many defensive fouls did the player commit per team play? And he was at 2%, which is really good. And another thing that plays into defense is also rebounding. He is a solid rebounder, but again, this is about effort. He is very inconsistent with it. There are games where he’s getting eight plus rebounds, 10 plus rebounds, and then the next night he’s getting like two rebounds. But he does crash the glass and get some good rebounds. I thought, especially on the offensive glass, he was really good. He sticks with the plays, fun putback dunks. He’ll go up, grab the offensive rebounds, be super aggressive, and just go straight back up with it. And overall, yeah, I thought he was a really solid defender and rebounder. Again, it’s all about effort. Now, I’m going to go over to some of the miscellaneous things about his game that I really liked. Um, one thing I did think specifically that he was good on the offensive side is is dribble handoff situations. I thought he was really good in the dribble handoffs. Being able to be a decision maker in those situations, being able to put his head down, go to the basket, get a jump shot off in the mid-range as well as the three-point line, being a three-level score. And then the next thing I have in my miscellaneous, like we already talked about a minute ago, is that transition play. He is very, very good in the transition. He can do a lot of different things. He can make a good pass. He can dunk on you. He has the speed and athleticism to cover a lot of ground quickly. off steals in the transition, he was in the 83rd percentile. In all transition, he was in the 87th percentile. And then my last thing in the miscellaneous is he is not affecting the game that much if he can’t score the ball. Yes, he’s a distraction because he’s a good three-point shooter. So, you got to have a man on him at all times and stick with him, but if he’s not scoring, he’s not doing a whole lot. He does make some good cuts off the ball sometimes, but he’s definitely more of an isolation kind of guy. So, if I had to pick some things that I’d like to see him improve on, I’d like to see him continue getting to that rim. We want to see him passing the ball more, which I can see being very realistic because he’s going to have more consistent minutes hopefully with the Wizards. So, it’s not going to be like, oh, I’m playing 40 minutes this game. I just got to get all the shots up I can. It’s just going to be I’m playing 25 plus minutes every night. So, hopefully it’ll put in his brain a little bit more that he doesn’t have to just put his head down and get to the basket because he’s going to have more opportunities to score the ball. And also giving effort on every possession, whether that’s defensive or offensive. And I do think a change of scenery is going to be really good for him. Um, and that’s really all I had to talk about Cam Whitmore. I’ve made a lot of Wizards videos in the last like month or two, so I didn’t really mean to do that, but like they’ve just had a lot going on. I was already going to make a Cam Whitmore video and then he got traded. I was like, “Oh, this is a perfect time to do it.” Wizards fans, I got to know what you think if you’re excited to have him on the team. If you’re not really excited and like I said at the beginning of the video, you have a lot of mouths to feed now. You got Bub Carrington, Trey Johnson, Bal Koulibali, AJ Johnson, Alex Sar, Kashan George, Cam Whitmore. You want Tristan Vousvich to get his shots up. You need Justin Champany to get his shots up. You know, depending on how much Will Riley’s able to play, then you got another guy to add to that list. So, there is a lot going on and like I said, I’m very interested to see how the Wizards are going to handle this, what their rotations are going to look like for the first couple months of the season especially. You know, later in the season, we’ll be able to see more concrete what that rotation is going to look like, but I’m definitely interested to see who they’re going to be prioritizing. Couple more things before we wrap this up. If you have not already voted on the poll, go to the community post, scroll down, and if you care about a 2K series, go vote on which team you want me to use. This 2K series will not be happening on the main channel. This is going to be on the second channel. The link is right above it on the other community post. And also, if you go to the homepage on my channel, it’s going to be this link right here. The channel is Ethan Intuition. Make sure to go subscribe to that. And the very last segment before we get up out of here is the best segment of the day. It’s my favorite segment of the day, and it’s the comment of the day. If you don’t know what the comment of the day is, it’s my favorite comment from the previous video. It can be about literally anything. I do not care what it’s about. Today’s comment of the day is going to be from this kind man from Brazil. I’m not going to try and pronounce your name because I’m going to butcher it. He says, “Great video as always. Could you make one about the Heat’s future? Shout out from Brazil.” The reason this is the comment of the day is because if anybody else wants to see a video about the Heat’s future, if I get one or two comments about it on this video, I will 100% make that video in the next week. So, let me know what y’all think about that. And of course, if you have any video ideas, anything you want me to make, just go ahead and comment down below. Thank you for making it to the end of the video. I really appreciate you. Shout out all the people that watch and support on the videos. I love each and every single one of you. Unless your name is Kyle Koozma as always, and I will see you on the next video, man. Peace out.

In Todays Video we talk about the new Washing Wizard, Cam Whitmore! Today I cover Cam’s game from his shooting, attitude, finishing, defense, and more!

Shoutout to @guilhermefazio for comment of the day! Much love friend

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